Stormhouse

STORMHOUSE is a British sci-fi/horror outing that flirts with the found footage genre in its telling of a secret military project accidentally releasing a supernatural entity inside a research station. Said supernatural entity then goes on a rampage of destruction while a female researcher tries to figure out a way to stop it.

So far so good, you might think. And the potential for an interesting film is right here. However, it's the awful execution that really lets this movie down. I understand that the budget was very tight, but is that any reason to shoot a film in near total darkness throughout? Aside from a couple of well-lit interludes, this is one of the darkest films I've ever seen. And shaky camera-work and pitch black background is not a good combination. Trying to make out what's supposed to be on the screen is half of the challenge here.

The rest of the film is an odyssey of attempted scare scenes and mild gore effects. The cast was unknown to me but are quite adequate for this type of film. It's just a pity that the film is so dark and difficult to watch, as it could have been a BLAIR WITCH contender had more care been taken with the look and feel of it.

Story/Writing: It's a pretty solid claustrophobic story. It's interesting and generally well-written, with only a few "What the heck?" moments. The dialogue is generally good, though the minor characters are fairly stock, interchangeable, and pretty forgettable. One or two of them almost come through sometimes as interesting in their own right, but then the moments are gone. Still, it all works pretty well, and the pace was okay, which is better than most films. And I believe the ending worked. I liked it. (7/10)

Direction/Acting: It's atmospheric, to be sure, just sometimes a bit too dark to see what's going on on-screen. Considering the budget and likely time constraints they were under, I can understand why they made the choices they did. Still, however, a bit too dark too often. The pace was generally good, with only a few short lulls (and they weren't distracting). (6.5/10)

The acting was pretty good across the board, though it seemed the supporting cast's characters were limited by either the script or the director's choices on pacing and story... or possibly both. It was obvious the talent was there, and more from the supporting cast really could've livened things up for tension, in my opinion. It could've given it that feel they were looking for, the atmosphere from John Carpenter's "The Thing". Stormhouse's ensemble cast were good, the main cast in particular. I kept wanting more, though, and that's the biggest drawback for my money. (5/10)

This is without a doubt one of the worst horror movies that I have had to suffer through, so I guess the label 'horror' was accurate in that sense, but in the sense of it being a scary movie, not so much.

"Stormhouse" starts off with indicating "This film was inspired by real events". Yeah, then that makes me Elvis Presley incarnated. So they want us to believe that the British military had managed to capture a spirit entity from the afterlife? And to make matters even worse, keep it secured in a small fenced yard? Right! Lets see, spirit entities are incorporeal and ethereal, meaning they would be able to traverse in any direction and even through solid matter. But still, the director wanted us to believe that a chain-linked fence (without a roof) was sufficient to hold such a supernatural entity at bay?

Moving on. And for a military base, it is without a doubt the most unlit installation in the history of military bases. I have never seen such lack of lighting anywhere. And I found it highly unrealistic and questionable that a military force would keep their base shrouded in perpetual darkness. And it just didn't help the movie one bit either, as most of the time we can hardly see what is going on because of the poor (well, lack of) lighting in almost every scene.

As for being a 'horror' movie, then "Stormhouse" was really a major disappointment, as there were no scares in it at all - probably because we couldn't see what was going on as there wasn't sufficient lighting anywhere. And also, the entire story was just so very implausible that it didn't work out on any level.

I am a big fan of horror movies, and I do like supernatural movies, but this one was just too much waste of time and effort. There are far better ghost movies available on the market. Actually, you might even be better off (and more entertained) by movies such as those awful "Paranormal Activity" movies. But still, they were better than this one.

One thing that "Stormhouse" had working for it, though, was the people they had cast for the various roles. Most of them actually did good enough jobs in acting, but nothing really memorable here though.

It wasn't very far into the movie before I started to do other stuff while the movie was playing; SMS texting and cleaning up the living room. The story in "Stormhouse" is just unfathomable uninteresting and unappealing. If you like horror movies or ghost movies, "Stormhouse" might not be a good choice. I was bored senseless.

Sadly, the comments I read before watching the movie got me pretty excited, I wasn't expecting a masterpiece but certainly not this, not this at all. A complete waste of time, from minute 1 till its very end.

The most annoying thing during "Stormhouse", is the light! There isn't any! It's all pretty much pitch black, you can hardly ever see anything! Of course the acting is as bad as it gets, the dialogue as horrible as possible, even the sound was extremely bad! Why? Because it fluctuated in a very disturbing way, either the actors were whispering and you couldn't hear one word they were saying or out of the blue you got hit by this amazingly loud "music", put there to mark a very "important and suspenseful" moment! And there were none, so the "music" was clearly set only to annoy the audience. It looks like one of them really old movies, where everything happens in the dark, and you have to use you imagination, as wildly as possible, to make sense of anything whatsoever.

If you don't take my advice and you decide to give it a try, because 4 other people gave positive feedback, after you see it, I double dare you to find something worse out there! And believe me, this is going to be one heck of a challenge!

I sat through this biting my lip, not through tension, but from just sheer embarrassment. The acting was reasonable, but the lighting was disastrous, it looked cheap on every level.

The only good thing about a film like this is the actors can hide their faces and simply pick up their paycheck after they've finished with performing this rubbish. For a film of this 'quality' you obviously hire a cheap writer, who fortunately for them will always be able to remain anonymous, especially as they are irrelevant to the structure of the piece.

Whoever wrote this should go away for a long time and read a bit of Syd Field and learn the craft before ever putting pen to paper again. No need to go into story here, as it's been covered previously.

It saddens and angers me that with so much talent out there, a group of individuals can come together and gain funding for this kind of atrocity. No wonder the British Film industry struggles if this is the best it can come up with. I wasted a few hours, I suppose I should not grumble, at least I had the time to waste and can use this as a demonstration on how not to write a screenplay and tell a story.

Harsh I know, but this is a warning to others. Avoid Stormhouse like the plague, although the plague is a better option.