The Hexecutioners

I am not sure if anyone mentioned this but the lead's name was the first thing I picked up on... Malison, some might think its a combination of Melissa and Allison or Malory and Allison, but it comes from old latin (as if it could be anything else) Maledicere meaning to speak badly of a man or a male figure. However in the 13th century after Malison became gender neutral, and was being used more often, it took on a new meaning, in today's webster, the word Malison means CURSE, TO CURSE or CURSED.

So using it as a First Name, was creatively a good idea, I can see how it might have been overlooked by the audience, specially since Malison is not something one hears in a day to day conversation, besides it has largely been supplanted by its younger cousin MALEDICTION.

Given the movie's cover, I must admit that I was immediately lured in. The promise of a horror movie is always something that gets my attention. I hadn't heard about this movie prior to finding it. I didn't read the synopsis, I just picked it up and decided to give it a go.

Somewhat of a mistake on my side. Because this movie was horribly boring and pointless. The movie started out rather well, but then it fell into a seemingly endless spiral and never recovered, and the movie just kept getting more and more boring as it progressed.

So boring that I turned it off with only about 10 minutes remaining. I was ready to call it quits at 1 hour into the ordeal, but decided against it in the slight hope that the movie would improve. It didn't!

"The Hexecutioners" offers nothing of any interest at any level. Well, aside from it actually having fairly adequate acting performances from a rather small and limited crew of performing actors and actresses. Just a shame that they had absolutely nothing to work with in terms of script and storyline.

My rating of 3 out of 10 is solely based on the production level of the movie, because that was rather good. Everything else in the movie, not so good.

This movie is not one that I could or would recommend that you waste your time, money or effort on. I did, and I regret it horribly.

This film starts off fairly straightforward. Euthanasia has been legalized and two young, attractive women, who carry out this work, have been assigned a job at a large creepy mansion. It reveals that this place and it's owners are involved in some sort of dark Himalayan (I think) cult and it all gets very weird and hard to follow. Visually it's OK so rather try and understand the plot I just went along that. Strange film, I wouldn't waste my time trying to understand it with a second viewing.

A film that you would think would be asking questions on the morality of euthanasia, as this is the employment of the main characters, but no, it doesn't. It does start off doing so when we hear the brooding sermonising of Walter Bardon as the bible bellowing Mr Poole. Once Malison's out of the way we soon realise this becomes just a ghost story set around the ending of an old mans life by euthansia. Nothing really wrong with the opening scenes where we are introduced to the main characters: Liv Collins as Malison, a poverty stricken, conscientious novice who fouls up on her debut assignment in her new employment. And Sarah Power as Olivier, a professionally detatched, tough, badd-ass with 3 years service who gets partnered up with Malison on her next assignment to get her over her inept start. The competant acting arises some optimism for the rest of the film, but sadly this soon disolves when the ghosts start appearing and disappearing without doing much else but appear then disappear. This is where counting candles may become a suitable alternative to watching the lack of any worthwile action. In fact the most creepy creep around is the house steward, the son of the doomed owner, another well acted role. The final scenes, the expected demise of the owner of the house, rise to something which we would have hoped would have been the norm for the middle part. It is right out of Edgar Allan Poe territory, before the film loses it's way with a couple of more deaths, one not surprising but gruesome, and one surprising but less gruesome. The film rounds off with a rather pointless ending.

A murky horror picture in which two young women are despatched to a remote, creepy old house to assist its occupant in a mercy killing. Once there, they find that things are not quite what they seem. Weak and unfocused, with a very slow build to a confusing climax. The lead character will lose most viewers' sympathies early on when she abandons her pet cat in the countryside.