Satanic

A teenage girl (who appears to be 30) is in a nasty car accident, loses her memory, and is placed in Harmony House with other "problem kids" where she begins to recall a past riddled with Satanic imagery and Ouija board fun.

This film is truly awful. The opening scene is ruined by a horrible actor who reappears multiple times throughout the film, repeating the same lines (variations of "what did you do, Michelle?") and coming across as the worst actor in history. His presence, along with the way the director felt the need to splice his scenes in, really killed any hope this movie had of being good.

Also, the film really drags. The same things happen over and over again. The flashbacks get on my nerves like you wouldn't believe, and even in the later parts of the film where the mystery begins to make sense, it's really stupid and tedious.

I really wanted to like this film. It has horror movie legend Angus Scrimm, as well as icons Jeffrey Combs (one of my idols) and James Russo (who coincidentally also co-star in "Blackwater Valley Exorcism", see separate review). It has a shower scene and one of the hottest girls in horror history getting it on. And two teenage boys who I thought were pretty funny, arguing over a video game in what I could only describe as 1980s Atari commercial style. Yet, it fails miserably.

Scrimm is okay, and Combs does fairly well as the detective (and why wouldn't he?). But neither has a role with much depth or range. Combs first appears in a scene where he has maybe two lines and 30 seconds of screen time, and I was quite worried they had used him just to put his name on the cover. While I still suspect this, at least he returned later on for another few minutes. Who are these people casting horror icons in such pointless roles?

There is no reason to see this film. While not as bad as the film "Nine Lives" I subjected myself to recently, it certainly ranks as one of the most worthless of 2006. With this influx of straight-to-video horror I've been coming across lately, I expect a lot of crap... but seriously, who are the people greenlighting these projects? Is this the time for me to make a directorial debut?

Utterly incoherent storyline, character development that does absolutely nothing, and awful acting. There is absolutely no reason to see this movie unless you're into sadism and masochism.

It starts off with a kid and her father in a car wreck, followed by horrible CGI, terribly fake stage setting, and giving the appearance that the movie might actually be interesting. Next scene, she's in the hospital, after having a miraculous recovery and facial rebuilding.

She ends up in some kind of foster home for troubled kids, and it doesn't really do anything from there. At all. Nothing. The first 3/4 of the movie is "character development" that does nothing, and the last 1/4 is exposition galore that also, surprisingly, does nothing.

Stale, emotionless acting, one of the most predictable and cliché endings to anything I've seen in awhile, and an incredibly weak - almost non-existent - plot kill this movie. There are absolutely no redeeming qualities to this movie aside from the random nude shots, and even those are boring.

2/10

Amnesiac car crash survivor Michelle (Annie Sorell) undergoes reconstructive surgery on her face (as performed by 79 year old Angus Scrimm of Phantasm fame), after which she is sent to a halfway house for troubled teens (despite appearing to be at least in her late twenties); there she attempts to piece together her past with the help of her journal. What Michelle discovers in the pages of her notebook is a disturbing fascination with the Satanic arts, and when those around her begin to turn up dead, she looks to be the prime suspect. Jeffrey Combs plays the police detective who investigates.

Top billed horror legends Angus Scrimm and Jeffrey Combs (Reanimator) are completely wasted in this film, their roles amounting to nothing more than cameos, neither adding much to the plot. With pedestrian direction, cheap cinematography, crappy editing, unexceptional performances from the less seasoned members of the cast, zero scares, lacklustre gore, and a really dumb twist, about all there is to hold the viewer's interest is some brief gratuitous female nudity: Eliza Swenson as bad girl Dalia gets topless, a nameless blonde also flashes her thrupennies, while Sorell goes the whole hog for the film's obligatory shower scene, where the actress gets to show the viewer both sides of her character: front and back.

After a car crash, the teenager Michelle (Annie Sorell) has the face completely destroyed and amnesia. In the hospital, she is called Bride of Mummy due to the mask she needs to wear along her therapy. However, her doctor makes a perfect facial reconstruction using family pictures and Michelle is discharged from the hospital and sent to a home that lodges young offenders since she was considered a troublemaker before the car crash. The police release her possessions of the day of the accident – a journal and an Ouija board - and Michelle moves with the host Bisson (Rick Dean) to his house. On the same day she leaves the hospital, the janitor is murdered. Michelle shares a room with the outcast delinquent Dalia (Eliza Swenson) and she has dreadful nightmares during the night and is confused. She befriends Larry (Brett Erickson), who shares another room in the house with Dutch (Brian Burnett), and tries to help her. When Dalia is found dead in the room with cuts in the wrists, the evidences are of suicide; however Detective Joyner (Jeffrey Combs) suspects that Michelle is the responsible for the murders.

The greatest attraction of "Satanic" is certainly the name of the cult- actor Jeffrey Combs in the credits, but unfortunately he has a minor role. The screenplay is a complete mess, with a poor development of the characters; and the worse, this lack of information of the characters is part of the predictable plot point. The unknown Annie Sorell is completely miscast in the role of a teenager since she is certainly twenty and something years old. The same happens to Eliza Swenson. The conclusion is terrible, with many deaths without any consequence. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "Jogos Satânicos" ("Satanic Games")

A hodgepodge mess of a film that has no spark, life's and dull and most damningly wastes the talents of not one, but two horror movie mainstays. Jeffrey Combs has a minuscule part, and thus, as wasted on the movie as he is, he gets off lighter then poor Angus Scrimm who has a bigger part in this fiasco. I spent much of the film merely feeling bad for him.

Michelle, disfigured from a car accident gets partial amnesia as well as a reconstructed face before going to her new life in a halfway-house where a murder lurks. The twist is so god-awful but it fits with the rest of the movie, if only in that the rest of the film is awful as well.