Takes itself way too seriously
... View MoreMost undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??
... View MoreIt’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny
... View More.Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.
... View MoreSTORMHOUSE is a British sci-fi/horror outing that flirts with the found footage genre in its telling of a secret military project accidentally releasing a supernatural entity inside a research station. Said supernatural entity then goes on a rampage of destruction while a female researcher tries to figure out a way to stop it.So far so good, you might think. And the potential for an interesting film is right here. However, it's the awful execution that really lets this movie down. I understand that the budget was very tight, but is that any reason to shoot a film in near total darkness throughout? Aside from a couple of well-lit interludes, this is one of the darkest films I've ever seen. And shaky camera-work and pitch black background is not a good combination. Trying to make out what's supposed to be on the screen is half of the challenge here.The rest of the film is an odyssey of attempted scare scenes and mild gore effects. The cast was unknown to me but are quite adequate for this type of film. It's just a pity that the film is so dark and difficult to watch, as it could have been a BLAIR WITCH contender had more care been taken with the look and feel of it.
... View MoreFresh faced Hayley Sands arrives at the Stormhouse thinking she's got a ghost to deal with - but before long, it's the people that prove to be problem.Military personnel, long exposed to the haunting influence of a trapped paranormal entity have become twitchy, paranoid about the security of their project and indifferent about hiding an amoral attitude towards human life.These weaknesses manifest as glorious opportunities for the ghost to exploit, which it does to great effect.If you're prepared to accept a production on a limited budget, then there are some great things in this film. We have the the horror of what people can do to one another - well set up by the curious hole in the cage. We have a conflict in morality over the Guantanamo style treatment of a terrorist. We have betrayal of trust & the dysmorphic sense of sense of self importance brought on by isolation. The story plays a great slight of hand with the audience when all hell breaks loose & neatly reveals how the entity was first captured on the way out.As for the thing itself. I enjoyed its playful nature. It made for malevolence from a place of innocence. Could it have been better? Budget aside (which isn't everything) I wanted a bit more cohesion in places. More lightweight banter from the resident to assist with character depth - although it's not bereft. I also felt that the general darkness of the Stormhouse made it harder for the locations to assist in taking you through the story. i.e. - we needed some visual separation to help frame the different scenes as we repaint the story in our memory.So in the end, I appreciated the ideas here that are so lacking in many other horrors.
... View MoreThis is without a doubt one of the worst horror movies that I have had to suffer through, so I guess the label 'horror' was accurate in that sense, but in the sense of it being a scary movie, not so much."Stormhouse" starts off with indicating "This film was inspired by real events". Yeah, then that makes me Elvis Presley incarnated. So they want us to believe that the British military had managed to capture a spirit entity from the afterlife? And to make matters even worse, keep it secured in a small fenced yard? Right! Lets see, spirit entities are incorporeal and ethereal, meaning they would be able to traverse in any direction and even through solid matter. But still, the director wanted us to believe that a chain-linked fence (without a roof) was sufficient to hold such a supernatural entity at bay?Moving on. And for a military base, it is without a doubt the most unlit installation in the history of military bases. I have never seen such lack of lighting anywhere. And I found it highly unrealistic and questionable that a military force would keep their base shrouded in perpetual darkness. And it just didn't help the movie one bit either, as most of the time we can hardly see what is going on because of the poor (well, lack of) lighting in almost every scene.As for being a 'horror' movie, then "Stormhouse" was really a major disappointment, as there were no scares in it at all - probably because we couldn't see what was going on as there wasn't sufficient lighting anywhere. And also, the entire story was just so very implausible that it didn't work out on any level.I am a big fan of horror movies, and I do like supernatural movies, but this one was just too much waste of time and effort. There are far better ghost movies available on the market. Actually, you might even be better off (and more entertained) by movies such as those awful "Paranormal Activity" movies. But still, they were better than this one.One thing that "Stormhouse" had working for it, though, was the people they had cast for the various roles. Most of them actually did good enough jobs in acting, but nothing really memorable here though.It wasn't very far into the movie before I started to do other stuff while the movie was playing; SMS texting and cleaning up the living room. The story in "Stormhouse" is just unfathomable uninteresting and unappealing. If you like horror movies or ghost movies, "Stormhouse" might not be a good choice. I was bored senseless.
... View MoreA supernatural entity is captured by the military. It escapes. It's malevolent.Stormhouse is a solid enough horror film. But not a particularly memorable one. The action is confined to the military base and takes the form of the invisible entity possessing person after person, creating all manner of paranoia. There are some creepy scenes for sure. And the occasional inventive gore moment. But the film is, generally speaking, fairly conventional. It's obviously been shot on a fairly tight budget so some slack has to be given. But overall it was a pretty average feature.
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