Tuesday, August 08, 2023

Entity

 A British TV show called Darkest Mysteries joins a local author (Branko Tomovic) in Russia at a site where 34 people were found dead under mysterious circumstances in the middle of the woods.
 The crew for the show consists of the presenter (Charlotte Riley), a surly cameraman (Rupert Hill) and an enthusiastic one (Oliver Jackson).

 They also bring along a psychic (Dervla Kirwan). This is one of those movies where psychics aren't just the real deal, they're infallible. Ruth, who tends to make grand pronouncements in breathless mumbles that I could only understand about half the time, immediately sees dead people all over the place (which we're shown in pretty cheesy detail) and correctly identifies the site where the bodies were found, the place where the first victim was dug up, and leads the party through the woods to the nearby abandoned building where they were killed.

 There the medium sees more phantasmagoria, including the Russian army methodically shooting a bunch of people in the head. From there she zeroes in on one specific room in the facility, a room we recognize because it was shown in a prologue, where a creepy crazy naked dude did creepy crazy naked dude things and levitated and moved things with his mind. Then there's a couple of jump scares, everyone freaks out, and one of the cameramen disappears.


 There is very, very little to this movie. The plot is simple and its mysteries easy to piece together, the characters barely fleshed-out, and the few twists it bothers to throw at us predictable and uninteresting. It's a good-looking movie for its budget - the premise all but screams found footage movie, but for x reason writer/director Steve Stone opted to alternate traditional shots in with the first person cams, which is honestly welcome as the cinematography for the non-diegetic shots is decent and very atmospheric. 
 All the actors are pretty good and are very believable despite their thinly sketched roles. The location itself is probably the film's biggest asset: A huge institutional-style abandoned facility, with all sorts of darkened rooms and hallways for our urban explorers to trudge through with their flashlights.

 But none of this makes up for the fact that barely anything interesting happens throughout, definitely nothing you haven't seen elsewhere. That's not a huge problem while the tension is mounting, but when things come to a head it's disheartening that most of the film's scares consist of either jump scares or POV shots where the camera is waved all over the place except where the action's happening while people scream their hearts out. That's fine as a choice, but this sort of chaotic horror blue-balling needs to be done much better than this to be effective.

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