Summoned

Lifetime adds it's touch to the supernatural thriller genre about former members of a jury who sentenced a man to death. One by one they start dying - is it a ghost or natural? It's moderately predictable in a reassuring lifetime way. It's also a bit weak especially in the romance part.

Ashley Scott is in a lot of LMN movies these days and she is a bit painful to watch at times. There is an inadvertently funny part with James Hong. Poor Cuba, what are you doing in this kind of TV movie? Overall okay for a relaxing watch if you just want to unwind and switch off your brain for a couple of hours.

Other than a couple of fairly jumpy moments, this is about as bad as it gets... poor plot, script and acting - and not at all scary. That's an hour and a half of my life I won't get back!

So I was surprised to see this film was made in 2013, because it does have a very old school/90s feel to it, and it looked old with some of effects as well. Some of the effects were a little cheesy in the way you'd see an older film pull it off too. So the lower budget did show a little. I can see why some reviews said it looked made for TV.

I really liked the detective angle of trying to get answers with what's going on supernaturally, and with the murder case. I thought it was a good way for the characters to get the answers they needed. I thought the plot was mostly well thought out, but did get a little weaker at the end.

Overall a decent job and I did actually enjoy watching it. I've seen much worse.

This felt more of a day time TV movie with a bit of a jump scare thrown in. A supernatural crime movie but with a weak anti climax. I think we expected more and were left a bit annoyed at ourselves for ensuring the rest of the movie.

Well SUMMONED is by no means as suspenseful nor as cleverly written as the 1967 Wait Until Dark. I compared the two to identify what is a really suspenseful and great movie and what is not. By now you have guessed that SUMMONED did not do it for me.

Cuba Gooding Jr is credited as one of the stars but he plays a minor part and a dumb cop to boot. So if you are watching Summoned because you admire Cuba Gooding Jr's body of work, you will be even more disappointed.

The two main actors Ashley Scott and Bailey Chase do a pretty good job trying to carry the movie but no matter how good the acting is, a poor script will create a poor movie, thus my 3 star rating. The plot surrounds a convicted murderer who is put to death and shortly after his execution the jurors start dying under mysterious circumstances.

Most irritating for me was the continuous use of the violins as the background music to try and hold our suspense. If you fast forward and skip to the last 15 minutes of the movie you will get the gist of the plot and find out who the killer is. Not a very creative movie and not one that will hold most movie fans heart in their throat.....at least not like Wait Until Dark does.