Dead Still

Suspenseful,scary,gore,fascinating are only a few words to describe this film! I had so much fun watching this movie! The characters are great! Costumes are wonderful and makeup and special effects are hauntingly delightful! The little girl who plays Lela is precious! I feel in love with her character! Most of all the story is intriguing and keeps you're attention! I was on the edge of my seat waiting to see what was next! Its on my DVR and I will be watching it again!! Thank you Booth Brothers for bringing us a very entertaining film! I hope you have other projects in the works because I for one am a fan! If your looking for a sitting on the edge of your seat kind of movie look no further!

Plot

Upon the death of his great grandfather, Brandon Davis a wedding photographer inherits an antique camera famous for taking Victorian death photography. After photographing his subjects they start to die from horrible, bizarre deaths.

Cast

Ben "Farscape" Browder and Ray Wise

Verdict

I was frustratingly excited by this, horror, Ben Browder, Ray Wise and the cover looked like my kind of horror! Bring it on I thought. I should have remembered Wise does a lot of terrible films and that outside of Farscape I've not seen Browder in anything enjoyable.

It has the "Killer camera" theme which we've seen several times before, the concept here is tweaked but doesn't deliver anything we've not really seen before.

Browder and Wise phone in their performances, this is a paycheck they did not earn.

The movie itself is oddly boring considering the subject matter, it plods along at an uneven pace, never really gets going, the kills are dreadfully handled and it builds to a weirdly drawn out finale that actually had me cringing.

Dead Still is one to skip over or put on if you have absolutely nothing else available to you and you're already too drunk to care.

Rants

So let's talk about the son, this kid is so alarmingly feminine I struggled to believe they were actually a boy until I Googled it. Don't get me wrong this isn't a dig in anyway shape or form, it was just a bizarre casting choice. Was the kid wearing eye liner? You'll think it's a daughter throughout especially since they're mute in the movie. The actor himself rather unsurprisingly went into one of the vampire teen melodrama things, he certainly comes under the pretty boy category and then some. I wish I was pretty, I like like a shaven potato .

Breakdown

Mostly pretty ugly Cast just don't try Never really gets going Boring Truly awful finale.

Not that I thought that Dead Still wouldn't work, in fact the concept was a good one and had the makings of a fun movie at least. It is however a concept that is not much new and there was the worry that Dead Still would do little with it. Actually Dead Still was better than anticipated, it is uneven and one does wish it did more with the concept but it is far from a waste of time. Starting with what was good with Dead Still is that it looks pretty good for a small budget movie, some of the camera work is a little too obvious on occasions but it actually flows and doesn't seem too jerky, and when it is the latter it doesn't feel over-used and actually adds to the scene. It won't win Best Photography any time soon but you shouldn't expect that, this is photography that looks like it was done with some professionalism. The make-up doesn't look too fake, the lighting is never too dark and the sets while not beautiful(though it's not the film for that) are hardly people's basement quality. The music has some eeriness without being too repetitive or predictable, and there is a decent degree of suspense once the movie gets going with some genuinely shocking moments and some extremely graphic and quite creepy death scenes. There are also three good performances, from Ben Browder, Gavin Casalegno and in particular Ray Wise. Browder has the most potentially identifiable role in the movie and brings dignity and gravitas to it, Casalegno's performance is enormously expressive and remarkably mostly with body language doing all the talking and Wise is deliciously evil as a character with no redeeming qualities and is clearly having a whale of a time.

There is however some terrible supporting acting, especially from Eric Ruff who goes so overboard as the Professor that it's painful to watch and feels like it belongs in another movie altogether while Elle Lamont and Carrie Lazar are rather stiff, though nowhere ever near as bad as Ruff. But they are not helped by that all the characters are very one-dimensional with very little character arcs and next to no motivation, and that Dead Still's script is very weak with some stilted dialogue and conversations that don't lead to much. As aforementioned, you do wish they did much more with the storytelling, there are suspenseful moments and some very creepy scenes mainly in the second half but the story does suffer from trying to take on too much and not exploring its ideas enough, especially the entire mirror-world thing that was really underused here. You are constantly asking yourself why the characters are acting the way they are, Brandon's fight never resonates, the storyline with his son has little back-story or motivation and just seems and the movie never explains why the son is mute or why the prophesy is as it is. In conclusion, Dead Still a very uneven movie but at least there were glimpses of effort and that while there was wasted potential it never felt like you regretted watching it. 5/10 Bethany Cox

"Dead Still" actually turned out better than I had anticipated, given the less than impressive reviews and overall rating that the movie had received here on IMDb. But still, it is a horror movie, and that alone had me interested. But given the negative vibe to the reviews and such, then I must admit that my hopes for the movie weren't great.

However, I was more than genuinely surprised that the movie was better than I had hoped (or feared) that it would turn out to be. Sure, it wasn't a horror masterpiece, but it still an entertaining enough movie, and it did have some originality to it, which was what kept the movie afloat.

The story was somewhat different from what I had expected and it was that aspect of the movie that particularly turned out to be a fresh addition to the horror genre. The storyline is about a wedding photographer who inherits an antique camera, that has been used previously to take obscure death-scene photographs. And strange deaths starts occurring around the talented photographer, which are tied to the old camera.

I will say that I was actually genuinely entertained by the movie, despite it not being a groundbreaking monument in the horror genre. But it still turned out to be entertaining and it did have a sense of originality to it.

The acting in the movie was adequate for most parts, but I must say that it was especially Ray Wise who carried the biggest part of the movie with his performance and his usual wicked charisma on the screen.

The effects in the movie were actually quite good, especially the creature make-up and designs. I liked those quite a lot. Just a shame that they weren't more actively used in the entire movie.

"Dead Still" is actually a good choice for a movie if you are in for an evening of horror movies. I was more than genuinely entertained and pleasantly surprised with it. Who knows, you might just be as well...

Being quite familiar with the correct history of so called post mortem photography popular from about the 1830th's well into the twentieth century, this movie caught my attention.

When I saw Ray Wise had o role in it I got even more interested, being a fan of his since Twin Peaks. But, man, was I disappointed. I Think they have completely missed out on the possibility to build up tension and uneasy feelings which surrounds this subject, it's all loud rock music with distorted guitars and agitated, irrational character behavior as if all hell had broken loose, and that was just minutes into the movie. The filmmakers could have done more with less, so to speak.

The acting and script seems very stiff (no pun intended), with characters, for example, reading letters out loud for themselves and describing what they are about to do talking loudly to themselves. Ray Wise's performance is good though, he makes a good effort with the role given him, but that's about the only solid acting in there is here.

The special effects in terms of gory dying/dead people is quite good, but over the top, a bit too much, and too early on in the film.

Horror fan, fan of the subject or both, you'll basically be wasting your time if you see this one.