Sader Ridge

Jeremy Berg's "The Invoking" tells the story of a young woman out to discover a past she never knew existed when a house is left to her by family she never knew was there. Samantha Harris (Trin Miller) and three of her friends take a trip to Sader Ridge to investigate the property, in the care of someone from Sam's past. "The Invoking" stars Andi Norris, Brandon Anthony, Trin Miller, Carson Holden, D'Angelo Midili, and Josh Truax.

The story in "The Invoking" is a pretty cool, classic adventure turned nightmare and that works for the first half of the film. The characters are emotive and portray some pretty convincing roles. There is some lag when the story arch hits the midway point, and instead of rushing into a thrilling overload of horror and melodrama, things fall a bit flat. The vision goes from one of almost paranormal chills to one that seems patch-worked between missing intent and scattered dramatics. I felt that something got lost in the translation toward the last act of the story. The first part created a great character building connection between me and the characters, the second act created an atmosphere of haunting unease but the last act seemed lost or held back. Plus there is absolutely nothing paranormal, supernatural or invoking in the story save the lead character's, Sam's, recovered memories of a sketchy past. I felt the marketing for this film is very misleading and that is really off-putting.

The special effects and horror elements in this film are almost non- existent. I am not sure if that was intentional or a budget crunching thing but I really expected more from "The Invoking" and was left with a major feeling of disappointment. The few horror moments in the film are lightly braised upon with standard effects tricks that work but considering there were so few moments and most of the film is melodrama I feel Lifetime Movie Network is more this film's audience. The ending was a total miss and made very little since. The meat of the mystery caretaker and Sam's relationship is almost missing from the story. The moments touched upon are not enough to justify how this film ends. So really most of the film is a fail considering the pay-off, after such a suspense build-up, is really not worth the time invested. I say skip "The Invoking".

The Invoking otherwise known as Sader Ridge is........wait.....why would you have an alternate title when The Invoking is an actual franchise? Weird call.

Anyway I digress, The Invoking is an independent extremely low budget horror that tells the story of a young woman who inherits a house and goes to visit it with her friends. She begins to see strange things and the caretaker isn't helping matters.

Yep, we've seen it before and alike the rest the plot neither goes anywhere or ultimately makes a vast amount of sense.

Considering the budget it all looks solid and the makers wisely avoided using any special effects at all instead relying on atmosphere and character development. The latter is fairly good, the former simply doesn't exist.

This is one of those movies you get the impression used clipart as its cover art. Woman randomly screaming like that? Nope. And that house? Nope, that doesn't look anything like the house in the movie! For crying out loud it's a bungalow in the film!

As mentioned this is a franchise, in fact at time of writing the 5th movie is in production! Because I'm a total masochist I'll end up watching them all, I do hope they get better than this.

The movie has a 2.2 on IMDB which for anyone familiar with the ratings system will know is outstandingly low, very few films get close to that. Does it deserve it? Perhaps not, but make no mistake it's bad stuff.

The Good:

Andi Norris

The Bad:

Dishonest cover

Poor story

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

It's movies/franchises like this that confuse me as to how the creators make their money back

6.1 is such a beautiful grade, especially for a horror, here on IMDb. So let's talk about it. Does "The Invoking" provide what it has to? Does it act as it suppose do? What exactly is it that it does?

First of all the acting, was OK, quite acceptable, well, except those moments when they try to cry; then the camera work, good for its budget; the characters were good; And this is why I graded it 3!

This is NOT a horror! You will expect something spooky, maybe a cliché even, as the story is about a young girl that inherits a house, and then strange things begin to happen, but not here. Time barely crawls, as this is one boring film, and then, something, finally happens, but it ends just at it appeared: without a warning!

Sure, they tried to make a natural movie, and yes, they succeed!

The Invoking is NOT a horror. It is a C+ thriller, which will bore you to death, and you will regret the time spent with it. Try anything else, but not this. Try Cabin Fever for example, that one is quite fun.

Aww, and by all means, do NOT trust the other reviews, cause I have no idea what they talking about.

What's there to like about this film:

1. The location

2. The creepy guy

3. Ummm

4. The end credits, which didn't come soon enough

In a nutshell, this movie can be characterised by:

1. Its terrible acting

2. Its terrible characters, who are also uninteresting and annoying (with the exception of the creepy guy who didn't spend enough time on set for me to have a chance to dislike him).

3. It doesn't make sense. No really, it doesn't. Is it or is it not a super natural flick?

4. It's just simply dumb.

5. No, it's super dumb, dumb on steroids, stupendously stupid... etc., etc.

6. Oh, and it's just plain boring.

If you like your horrors to be blah and dumb with characters that are borderline retards with either too much emotional baggage or lack thereof, then this movie is for you.

I saw the trailer and the poster for this movie, and when I saw that reputable Horror websites like Fearnet say "Must-see" and Fangoria say "Chilling", I thought, "this movie must be at least decent"...well I was proved wrong! Here's what this movie ISN'T; thought provoking, original, riveting, engaging, well acted. It was long (even though it was only 80 minutes), boring, mediocre, and just plain bad. The cover/poster closely resembles the hit film 'THE CONJURING' (even the name was changed from 'SADER RIDGE' to 'THE INVOKING' to cash in on its success). But those are the ONLY similarities to that movie, the acting is poor, the story is totally cliché and been done before (in a much better context mind you), and yet again I'm left thinking how did this movie get financed?? People must want to throw money away. And as for the rating being at 5.7 out of 10 (on the date of this review February 19, 2014), in my opinion this does NOT deserve it, more like an average of about 2.5 out of 10 at most! So with that said, I give this rubbish a 1 out of 10. Do not waste your time.