Her Name Was Christa

Sadly this was doomed once Ariauna Albright dropped out. The role of Christa was written for her and it seemed at least that the big draw to this film would be Albright and Edwards reuniting in an attempt to re-capture the chemistry they had in 1997's Bloodletting.

Shianne Daye takes over the role as Christa and she makes an admirable effort. Unfortunately, inserting someone with little to no experience into a role with tons of dialogue written for another person isn't going to work and it doesn't here.

A ton of respect is due to Edwards and everyone involved. It seemed like they ran into an endless amount of setbacks and struggles but they were still able to power through. As much as I tried to keep that in mind while watching the movie, in the end it's just not good.

So, I am FB "friends" with the lead/director of this movie and saw his endless posts to watch his first movie. I am a true supporter of not only low budget movies, but horror, particularly. I wanted to support this guy's efforts and good for him for creating a project from beginning to end. It is not easy. Unfortunately, this is where the compliments end. I had no intention of leaving a review but, he has repeatedly begged and pleaded his friends to leave an IMDB review as well as for the YT trailer. I don't find this to be a particularly desirable or fair request. But, since you pushed me, here it is! I gave it 2 out of 10 because it isn't the worst movie I have ever seen, but it was right next in line. The acting was so unnatural I felt like the bad script was jumping off the screen, which is the 1st thing to take me out of the moment. That was followed by the extremely long and totally unnecessary dialog scenes that were bad to begin with. Why the director and writer would feel the need to put himself on the screen for basically the entire movie is beyond me. However, I think that coupled with the consistent bombardment of begging and pleading on FB you can draw you to your own conclusion. This movie didn't feel like much of anything to me, which is worse than even even hating it IMO. At least even Tommy Wiseau's movie was funny to watch with friends. Good luck to him in the future. Maybe next time he will consider hiring someone who can act to be on screen for 2 hours straight. I have never seen his other acting rolls, but judging by the "Bad Movie Police" series, I will skip those too.

This is what happens when a director also stars in and writes his own movie, two and half hours of "watch how great think I am". The interesting question this movie does evoke is, why would you not just hire a competent actor for the lead of Steven Booth? He was the worst actor in the movie with Christa being a close 2nd. Obviously, the ending, which I really struggled to get to, was suppose to shock and awe, but the FX were so bad, it didn't do anything except make me laugh. The FX on Christa's body in general were head scratching. The movie was very messy, amateur at best and embarrassingly written and acted. Please, all filmmakers, for the love of god, do not star in your movie, it is a really bad look. Let this movie be a lesson to everyone, just because you can memorize lines and say them in front of a camera, it doesn't mean you're an actor. Folks, don't spend the money. There are lots of indie horror movies out there that deliver, this just isn't one.

The breakdown of my score for Her Name Was Christa, watched . I saw these glowing "reviews", which made me excited to see this. Unfortunately, I was left confused and disappointed.

Story - 2.5: While the general idea grabbed my attention, it had no other supportive qualities to hold it up. Neither villain nor hero and a weak twist that left me disappointed. I kept wishing it had gone in an entirely different direction, which would have raised my score for the storyline.

Acting - 1.5: This is one of the 3 biggest things that hurt this movie. The only character I sort of believed was "Nick" and that actor was working with very little. He may be better in a movie with believable dialogue and direction? The lead, Steven (also the director and writer), was in EVERY scene, unnecessarily. His acting was ridiculously over the top and needed to be brought down quite a bit. It seemed a very ego-driven project to me.

Writing - 1: As I said before, this movie is extremely dialogue based, with poor acting and unrealistic writing. It seemed very lazy. When a story is told with that much dialogue and little to watch on the screen, it better be backed up with insanely good acting and something of interest to hold my attention. It did none of the above.

Cinematography - 2: Again, going back to the lazy aspect of this movie, it was apparent to me that very little went into the thought behind the "look". It was as straight forward as a 7th grade film project. Very little creativity was found in any scene.

Makeup and FX - 2.5: At least they tried. From the makeup on the lead character, down to the fading and eventual corpse of Christa, it was not sufficient. I don't want to get into spoilers, but nothing at all looked natural about the FX, with one exception (pen to the arm).

This movie was trying (and failed) to be a story which has charaters we care about, a lead actor that we are supposed to feel bad for and we are apparently, expected to be consumed by the dialogue? I had none of these feelings. It was honestly, boring, self-serving and over acted to the point that it felt comedic. Although, maybe I missed the point and it was supposed to be funny? If so, about 95% of the dialogue should be edited out. Pass on this one, too slow to be funny, too bad to be good and too disappointing to be shocking.

Horrifying acting.... no way can anyone seriously think this is good.