Seventh Moon

I didn't know what to expect going into this. To be honest I had it in the back of my head that it would be just one more crappy Asian-style ghost story about some girl with long black hair. Luckily it was not, but it's still certainly not without it's faults.

OK, well to be fair this is *kind of* an Asian ghost story, but not the kind done to death since about 2000. It's based on the Chinese myth that under the full moon in the seventh month of the lunar year the dead can cross over to the land of the living. Fair enough...just like Halloween in some countries. But these things aren't some wussy little ghost...they're more like humanoid demons. So it scores some cool points for concept. Now for the bad news...

I'm not normally one to pick on technical aspects of a movie, but there are some pretty major problems here. First is the lighting, or rather the lack of it. Many parts of this movie are so dark that it's not even scary. You have no clue what's going on because you can't see a damn thing. And then there's the camera work. A good part of this is filmed with that shaky handicam. While that's something I'd expect from some fake documentary-style film (it's still annoying even then, but it's a bit more understandable), it's just about unacceptable to use it this much in a film like this. I suppose someone thought it would give a sense of terror or something to the movie. They were wrong. So basically you're left with a seemingly cool premise all but ruined by someone's attempt to make the film something that it wasn't. Truth be told, that kind of sucks. But in the end it's not too bad.

When this movie came out, I was genuinely hopeful. The concept of hungry ghosts is a central part of the tradition of Chinese Ancestor Worship, and had great potential for an excellent movie melding the supernatural and horror. The script writers even set it during an actual event in the Chinese year, a festival sharing much in common with the true traditions of All Hallows Eve. Unfortunately, that is as far as it went.

The film does not make the error that many movies make substituting gore for horror. There is enough blood to add to the suspense, and increase the tension that is central to this kind of movie. The script is serviceable. The protagonists never engage in the typical "how could they be so stupid" stereotypes of a true horror film. Their actions, at times foolish, were consistent with their characters as urban Americans enjoying their honeymoon in an exotic land. The actions of the other characters in the film are similarly plausible.

The problem is that the movie never really comes together. You vaguely like the young couple, and that's about it. You respect the actions of the only other real player in the movie towards the end, but I doubt he even has a total of ten minutes of screen time. The monsters are scary, and appropriately monstrous. None of this is the makings of great cinema.

My wife, upon the conclusion of the movie, asked me "What's the Point?" She meant it rhetorically, because we both had no trouble understanding what was going on during the movie. Yet that comment sums up succinctly my own reaction upon watching it. It wasn't a waste of 87 minutes of my life, and since the rental was free I don't feel ripped off. It's just very sad when this had the potential to be a very good movie.

In accordance with the Chinese Myth, on the full moon of the seventh lunar month, the gates of hell open and the spirits of the dead are freed to roam among the living.

Melissa (Amy Smart) and her husband Yul (Tim Chiou) are spending their honeymoon in the month of the ghosts in China, where they intend to visit his relatives. They participate in the Senwun (Ghost Festival) during the day, where they drink a lot of booze, and their driver Ping (Dennis Chan) heads to Anxian when the nights falls. A couple of hours later, Ping parks his car and tells that he is lost. He asks the couple to wait for him in his car while he asks for directions in a small village in the countryside. One hour later, Melissa and Yul decide to seek out Ping in the village, and they see the houses closed with live offering and the locals saying something in Cantonese. Yul does not understand what they are saying and the couple returns to the car and drive away trying to find the way back to the city. Sooner they meet a stranger, Wei, wounded on the road and Melissa decides to help the man. They are attacked by creepy creatures and they discover that the spirits of the dead are hunting the living. Melissa and Yul try to find a way to protect themselves and survive the hellish night.

"Seventh Moon" is a forgettable low-budget horror movie with a reasonable story and basically four characters only. Unfortunately the camera work is awful, with excessive use of closes and blurred while showing the fiends, maybe due to the limited budget for special effects. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "A Maldição da Sétima Lua" ("The Curse of the 7th Moon")

Part of the Ghost House Underground DVD series, Seventh Moon is based on the Chinese legend that on the full moon of the seventh lunar month, the gates of hell open and the dead can enter the realm of the living.

The film opens in China where we are introduced to newlyweds Melissa and Yul (Amy Smart and Chiou) as they walk the streets of China acting as regular and normal as any tourist – taking in the culture and enjoying the ethnical differences.

When Melissa and Yul are left by their guide, Ping, in a remote ancient village, their night of terror takes them through puzzling occurrences and face to face with some ghastly creatures.

As with most horrors, the tension and the events that lead to eventual terror takes time to build. It starts with their car being splattered with blood while the couple were investigating outside of the village. Smartly, the couple don't' try and stay to figure out why they were targeted. Instead, they get in their car and try and hi-tail it out of dodge. But when a mysterious figure runs in front of their vehicle driving them off the road, Amy and Yul are soon on foot trying to evade the deadly beings that are in pursuit.

Seventh Moon is directed by Eduardo Sánchez who directed The Blair Witch Project in 1999 and the under appreciated Altered in 2006. Sánchez emulates his Blair Witch debut by shooting Seventh Moon with hand-held cameras and quick edits. This can get awfully annoying if you are not in the mood for unsteady camera work.

Although the atmosphere and the intense mood of the film gets high marks, the film fails by not offering anything new to the genre. Spooky as it was at times, the shaky camera doesn't allow the audience to get to know the characters as well as a steady-cam. It is bad enough that the setting all takes place at night where visibility is poor to begin with. Couple the setting with the constant shaking and un-centered camera efforts, and there isn't any time for emotional investment amongst all the other distractions to care whether the two leads live or die.

The first half being watchable and the second half evoking a 'please-hurry-I-have-things-to-do' response, Seventh Moon (which copied way too much from The Descent) is just average. And in this genre, that just doesn't cut it.

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The main horror of this film is the horrible shaky cam !