Kill Katie Malone

Prior to actually switching on the movie, this had promise. The premise that somebody might buy a ghost on eBay (or the copyright friendly film version of YouBid) interested me and I was eager to see how the story unfolded.

Unfortunately, a promising idea has been sold out to the tune of yet another college/teen horror thriller where a bunch of attractive American teenagers spend half the film running around a college or dorm from some kind of terrifying something that wants to kill them. Feel free to replace terrifying something with 'murderous ghost', 'axe wielding maniac', 'Freddy Kreuger' or whatever. It doesn't matter. The play out is the same and we've all seen it a million times before.

Direction is typically brash and predictable, akin to an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with less camp. Our protagonists make all the usual horror movie victim mistakes and the haphazard introduction of the haunting is far too over-the-top. Too much is shown too soon and the inevitable killing scenes are silly to the point of absurd.

There's really nothing new here. An original idea is squandered for the sake of a safe return on the budget (one assumes). The result is something forgettable and bland.

A trio of college pals merge their funds for an unusual online auction purchase...an 18th century box which houses the malevolent spirit of a murdered Irish servant girl. When the box is opened, the ghost is set free, and predictable carnage ensues.

KILL KATIE MALONE brings little to the table, but it's a satisfactory little product, nonetheless. Performances from the key players are a notch or two above the yardstick, and their characters are surprisingly developed. This is pretty subtle stuff for contemporary horror, though not entirely ineffective...I actually rather liked the way it skirted explicit visual shocks for a more veiled, spectral puissance.

All in all, a slightly higher quality production than the flat material really deserves.

5/10.

This one starts out with a reasonably fun premise - three college friends, Jim (Stephen Colletti), Dixie (Jonathan 'Lil J' McDaniel) and Ginger (Masiela Lusha), purchase a ghost in a box on an online auction, and stupidly release the spirit to wreak havoc - but the manner in which the film unfolds is so bland and unimaginative that I soon lost interest, propping open my eyelids, praying for it to all be over as soon as possible.

Director Carlos Ramos Jr. delivers mediocre spooky goings-on (CGI jump scares) and a couple of gore-free death scenes, while his cast give terrible performances, my award for worst acting going to the teacher who bites off her own tongue (she's hilariously bad!). Fortunately, Masiela Lusha is very easy on the eye and helps make the going a bit easier, but sadly doesn't go as far as getting her kit off - a shame, because if any horror film was crying out for a gratuitous shower scene to pep things up, it's this one.

What will our badly-tattooed friend who can't even grow a moustache do? I watched Kill Katie Malone for one reason: Masiela Lusha was starring in a horror movie. And it was real bad (though she wasn't... but I'm biased).

Where do I begin? First, every character is obnoxious. I'm not sure why so much modern horror is populated with unlikeable characters. I suppose this had an interesting premise, which quickly devolved into another variation of The Monkey's Paw. Three college students pool their money to buy a supposed ghost trapped inside a box online (from the generic company "uBid," and, similarly, we don't see anyone dressed as a "character" all Halloween long). Hey, it grants wishes! So they let the ghost out, get terrorized, and people around them start turning up dead (only in the most comical ways).

The ghost leaves a message written on our two best buds' wall, and one guy takes a picture of it, and sends it to a friend, who is apparently the only person he knows competent enough to Google something in a foreign language. Did I mention this guy is in college? I don't know if the dialogue was poorly written, or if some actors actually botched their lines and they left them in, but this movie has some rather odd dialogue. And it is lazily written. The competing bidder (somebody's concept of a Goth) on the box is suddenly all-knowing, all-seeing? Well, she did have impeccable timing! That's a good thing she did. I laughed at the end.

The title doesn't even make any sense. Katie Malone is the ghost. She's already dead!

Masiela turns up in leather shorts, fishnet stockings, and tall high-heeled boots for the climax. I don't know who she was dressed as for the Halloween party (class skank?), but that's enough for me, and warrants an extra star. Hey, I'm easy!

The plot: A trio of college students buy a box with a ghost in it, not expecting the box to truly be haunted.

Kill Katie Malone is basically a combination of the Robert Louis Stevenson short story "The Bottle Imp" and some stupid eBay auctions that caught the attention of the media, when people tried to sell ghosts. Predictably, eBay wasn't very amused, and it's now against their Terms of Service to sell ghosts, haunted items, or other supernatural things.

Apparently, these kids got in before the ban, and they buy a haunted box. Ooooh, creepy. The ghost allegedly has the power to grant wishes, but it's very clingy and family-oriented. If you say anything about abandoning her or breaking up the family, it tries to kill you. The only way to get rid of it is to sell it on eBay.

This is an absolutely ridiculous idea for a movie. The Robert Louis Stevenson story was actually quite interesting, because it offered what seemed like an unsolvable paradox. Kill Katie Malone, however, is just a generic slasher with a stupid plot. I'd have trouble recommending it to anyone, even bored teenagers. If you've got nothing else to do, I suppose you could waste your time on this, but I'm not sure why you would bother, when you could memorize prime numbers or the digits of pi. Either would probably be more exciting than watching this movie.