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mikebannacheck
Reviews
The Invited (2010)
The Ouija Strikes Again
The Ouija Board has always been a favorite theme in horror and within five minutes past the opening credits we witness a young girl crafting her own on an wooden circle to communicate with her dead brother. It is the year 1920 and the film begins in black and white at an old farmhouse, which happens to have a family cemetery out back. The girl anxiously goes to her brothers grave to test her device with horrible repercussions.
The movie forwards into the present with our protagonist Michelle, an author of children's fiction, and her husband Jack meeting a realtor at the same farmhouse. At that moment you can guess that she will find the Ouija board and unleash it's menace (especially if she uses it alone).
The best thing about the Invited was it steered clear from the possession motif notable in the Witchboard trilogy and most recently in Ouija. It does offer some scares and a few gruesome effects that make you forgive some cheap CGI effects deployed. The acting is believable and the character Michelle is like able enough to keep you watching what unfolds. Any horror fan should give it a go.
B+
Alan Bannacheck Minneapolis, MN
The Changing of Ben Moore (2015)
Another 'Point of View' Bites the Dust
Ben has been acting strange lately. He's not eating and his brother who lives with him and his wife discover he is sleep walking around at night with no memory. His brother is worried so he decides to document the case to show a doctor (or maybe an exorcist) He catches him killing the neighbors cat in the middle of the night. When he confronts Ben, he is shocked at the footage. Soon half dead bodies are being discovered in their neighborhood. Is Ben loosing is his mind or is something more sinister happening?
Ever since the Blair Witch Project and the widespread availability of video taping devices horror fans have been accursed with Point of View films that not only are used as a way to make movies cheaper but limit the scope of the narrative of the movie to one of these devices. Many times in this movie Ben screams at his brother "Are you filming this? Why are you (bleep expletive) filming this!!!" and I certainly found myself wondering the same thing. Every moment captured by the camcorder is convenient, and contrived. It's also convenient that when Ben or his brother review what's been recorded the next day they only reveal what happens in the beginning of the film. Suddenly a shift occurs and Ben doesn't mention it again.
The dialogue is forced and the at one point the viewer may witness the sheriff actually reading his lines from his notepad. Umberto Celisano, who plays Ben however nails the creepy factor as he wanders the house in the midnight hour in a trance. The way his eyes begin to change as the film progresses is haunting. The video being recorded gets more grainy in these parts, adding to the effect and manages not to be too gimmicky, quite an impressive feat. Those two things are the only reason the film deserves a D+ and not a Turkey (as Leonard Maltin would say)
Overall this film is for die-hard horror fans only and maybe fans of POV horror (if such a thing exists). The plot is very predictable. It plays out exactly how one would expect it to and this is would be frustrating for the non-horror aficionado.
Alan Bannacheck