Exhume

I watched this because it had 6 stars on IMDB, which for a horror movie is pretty good. It turned out that there was only one review, so I felt compelled to warn others that this is not a 6 star movie. The plot involves some really terrible parents who take thier daughter out of school so they can all escavate a creepy old building full of corpses. On arrival the daughter is confronted with some self mutilated nut job, followed closely by violent paranormal activity which involves her waking up in graves and digging up a bunch of human skeletons in her sleep. The parents react to this by suggesting she should increase her anti depressants.

The acting is fine and it's shot pretty well, hence 3 stars. The plot is nonsensical and the effects are made up of generic CGI jump scares, akin to a cartoon or video game. The family's interactions and reactions to the situation are laughable. I was looking forward to the plot twist, but sadly there wasn't one.

This film alone embodies all the sins of horror storytelling. I'm curious at how many writers were involved with this film OR how many scripts were used because there are a lot of stories going on in one poorly told story.

Birdemic level CGI, underacting, plot holes, the list can go on and on at how disjointed this film was. I would have asked for my money back, but I watched this for free online, even then I think I paid too much!

One of my biggest gripes with this movie is how it handles the topic of depression which comes across as mockery to someone who has it, showing that the topic was written about by someone who knows nothing about it.

An archeologist husband and a forensic anthropologist wife take on the job of searching for and exhuming the contested body of a boy on the grounds of a Christian camp for troubled teenaged males. They bring along their teenaged daughter, who has a history of mental illness, to help them. As they search for the body, she experiences ever more intense visions of the camp through the eyes of the boy until eventually things come to a head and the camp's horrific secret is revealed.

EXHUME starts off fairly well, and the first act, which sets up the story while literally providing flashbacks through the eyes of the hapless camp residents, is very effective. Unfortunately, after that, events become increasingly implausible.

I don't want to give away too much, but both the parents' actions seem less and less like what real parents would do in their situation, and the abilities of a girl who is, shall we say, not right in her mind, become more and more far-fetched. For example, toward the end, there is a car explosion without any obvious detonator, and a person is magically able to outrun undetected another person who is running back and forth.

There is an epilogue which suggests a possible sequel, but that would be a very different kind of movie because of how this one ends.

At any rate, the movie is well-shot and well-acted (though I feel the camp could have been given a bit more "personality") and probably quite entertaining if one does not think too hard about the later events.

Finally, I have a criticism which I cannot mention without a spoiler, so you have been warned.

SPOILER

I find it offensive that the movie implicitly seems to justify the evil of torturing and killing dozens of boys through the evil of a single psychopathic boy. I am actually a fan of movies with moral gray zones, and in principle, the idea of setting up competing evils is quite good. The problem here specifically is that by means of the "trial by fire" plot device this movie seems to suggest that a far greater evil is somehow justified when it is inflicted upon purported psychopaths.