The Crying Dead

So I started watching this for the first time this morning. I have to just say right off the bat, anyone who is familiar with the former Linda Vista hospital in Los Angeles then you would immediately recognize the shots outside of the hospital, it's a very iconic building. The same year this movie came out is when AMCAL Multi-Housing Inc. bought the building and renovated it into apartments. That is one of a few reasons why that scene was filmed out back of the hospital, since in this movie the hospital goes by a different name. I kinda giggled when Chris' character said it was "in a remote region of the northern California wilderness".

Yeah The Crying Dead was OK, but I wish someone would really kill (no pun intended) it with a ghost investigation movie.

I've been waiting to see this movie for over a year now. Since it was stilled called The Whispering Dead.

Was a nice surprise. They definitely went outside the normal ff box. It was a great mixture of horror, and comedy.

The characters were very likable, It was scary as hell at some points, and very funny in others.

It was great seeing quality acting in one of these films for a change.

It wasn't anything like Grave Encounters or PA. I'm OK with that.

Haven't seen that done before. Really worked.

All around great acting, action, and a worthwhile story.

THE CRYING DEAD AKA THE WHISPERING DEAD documents members of a crew for a new paranormal reality show breaking into and staying overnight at an abandoned hospital, where they encounter more than they bargained for.

This found footage movie was released the same year as GRAVE ENCOUNTERS (2011), a thematically virtually identical but far superior found footage movie which demonstrates how much potential was unrealized here.

The prologue shows old footage of some kind of experiment but then nothing later in the movie ties into it. The actual ghosts are not given the prologue treatment. Also, there is a tale of cannibals and of a patient who cut his nurse that go nowhere. The crew members just disappear and we never know what exactly happens to them. The motivations of the supernatural beings are entirely unclear, which is surprising, given how much time the movie spends recounting the history of the hospital. In short, this is one of the more disjointed found footage movies I have seen.

Everything is predictable from a mile away, save for one mild twist: when the first supernatural events occur, the crew members still think that it is prank played on them; and the motivation for thinking so is actually plausible. Actually, the order in which the team members are picked off one by one was also something I did not predict, but the end result was all the same. There are no really new ideas here.

Finally, the way the ghosts are introduced and used for horror is pretty bad. It is really obvious that the ghosts are just a special effect, and for a moment I thought this was actually meant to be a plot twist in which someone sets up hokey ghosts to scare the crew or something.

Some of the scenes had the potential to be scary, but the victims are dispatched far too soon to unsettle the audience, and then, as mentioned, we never find out what precisely happens to them.

Finally, I don't understand why so many found footage movies make their characters so unlikable. I understand that for dramatic purposes, it is good to have characters with tragic flaws, but we the audience still have to be able to look beyond that to care for them.

I did not rate this lower because, despite the disjointedness, the story itself was fairly coherent and the movie had at least some atmosphere.

Overall, I consider this a below average found footage film. Some more recent and better found footage treatments of the same concept are HOLLOWS GROVE (2014) and GONJIAM: HAUNTED ASYLUM (2018).

These found footage, first person spookhouse movies generally work on me if they're done halfway well. I loved The Blair Witch Project and Grave Encounters really had me going (despite some overtly goofy CGI effects). The Crying Dead also had me most of the way there but then lost me when the spooks came out. IMO there's two big problems that deflate the scares. One is the ghosts. They just aren't that scary. Three little girls, in Halloween facepaint, double-exposed as they traipse about in the dark hallways. Kinda spooky but not very. Despite some early implications that these aren't normal kids they don't behave very strangely or look very menacing (nothing like the ghouls in the poster image). I really think they needed an additional layer of bizarre to them... a hint at something... other. The second problem, for me, was the editing... or pacing of the movie. The movie starts off with a scene that sets up the threat, but it's on the verge of laughable because it's just so overt so early on. There are also scenes from later in the movie that are repeated early on during the slow stuff... I think to assure impatient viewers that there is some action coming. This wouldn't bother me as much in a regular film but it doesn't fit the found footage conceit here... particularly since those scenes are duplicates of later footage. In a way the film plays its hand in these early scenes and the rest is just going through the motions. Sadly, the nature of the haunting just isn't very imaginative... nothing beyond ghostly little girls with 'powerz'. Once they show up it's just rinse and repeat... they don't get any weirder or scarier than when we first saw them, early on. They really needed something more.

Despite those two points I still kinda enjoyed the movie. It did have me on edge at times, just by the nature of how it was filmed... the suspense is good even if the payoff is lame. The actors did a great job with what little they were given... all my gripes are with the writing/editing.

One other thing I'll mention... the music in the closing credits is the same sort of generic heavy metal that a hundred other horror movies toss in. I think it would have left the audience with a bit more of a after-scare if something more creepy and subtle had been used... something that carried on the mood of the film rather than blaringly contradicting it.

I was able to attend a Los Angeles screening of this film and was pleasantly surprised.

I find these style films entertaining but at the same time, never expect too much from them. Usually they're comprised of bad acting with some cool effects. Still entertaining but poor acting and story lines.

This one however had the best of both worlds. The acting was actually very good, it was a cool concept, and the gags were very creepy. The down time was palpable because of the actors involved.

I'm one of the few who really enjoy these kind of films and I think this another great addition to the genre.

If you want huge budget, A-List actors and crazy camera shots, this film isn't for you. But, if you want an entertaining found footage movie, here you go.