Satanic

I was really enjoying Satanic, but it falls under the category for me as another film slain by its own ending.

It tells the story of two young couples on a macabre road trip to see sites of murders and general "Satanic" behavior. Along the way they come across a young runaway who changes everything for them.

Starring Justin Chon and Sarah Hyland it looks the part, is very well written and I was fairly gripped to see quite where this was going to go.

Sadly most of the movie is character development and fluff, when the story really kicks in it's a bit of a blink and you'll miss it situation so suffice to say it has chronic pacing issues.

And then the finale! I do hate it when an ending can kill an up to that point enjoyable film, but here once again we have it. It feels rushed, it feels poorly thought out and as if the creators simply ran out of ideas and tacked some random nonsense on instead.

I should be singing the movies praises right now, the majority of the film is great and in the right hands it could have been something special. Instead this poorly thought out little horror is mediocre and a marker for what should have been.

The Good:

Looks great

Solid cast

Some great ideas

The Bad:

Poorly paced

Falls apart at the end.

As a horror fan, I tend to check out quite a few horror films. If I had a chance to "unview" this one, I would. The plot and writing are very poor. I realize the movie was made for a teenage audience, but still such a waste of time and money. Within the horror genre, good acting is not necessary (although appreciated). The performances here were so over the top and forgettable. The chills and scares were practically absent. You don't get to see much at all. I guess they kept the "shocking" scene for last, but for a more experienced horror viewer it didn't shock at all. It got so boring at some point I had to fast forward to see the finale, out of pure curiosity. Still a disappointment. If you're into the genre, just avoid this one.

Two young couples heading for a music festival find themselves in a nightmare scenario in Los Angeles after taking a day to check out some of the true crime hot spots in town. While one couple is straight laced and reserved, the other is attracted to Gothic culture and thrill seeking. Peer pressure and bad decisions lead to a nightmare scenario for all four teens. Satanic fits somewhere in between cookie cutter teen horror of the last 20 plus years and a cable television movie of the week. It isn't horrible but probably not worth watching again. If you've ran out of options and don't mind lowering your standards, this one shouldn't have you rolling your eyes too much.

Pretty average movie overall sub par story line somewhat offset by good acting.

I don't think it deserves the particularly scathing reviews on here - the story line was a bit muddled but the acting was actually quite good. The characters are played quite well and the main actress (Sarah Hyland from modern family) does a brilliant job in this.

It has some scares in it probably not as much as your used to from your average horror movie though. Its kind of creepy but again not as much as your average horror. Where it shines is the few scares it does have are very well placed and managed to give me a couple of jolts. There's a lot in this movie that you have to piece together for yourself - the movie itself doesn't seem to really care whether you got the plot point or got lost along the way and explains nothing.

All up 5/10 - 7/10 for the acting, 3/10 for the story line.

It seems like one of the hardest things to get out of Hollywood or an indie producer is a decent horror movie. "Satanic" is yet another in a long line of below par, forgettable horror movies made in the past 10 years. But at least it's not another crappy found footage film.

The production values on this movie are pretty good... again, no shaky, hokey found footage documentary-style garbage. Sound editing is pretty solid. The movie poster is ridiculous, but the movie looks and sounds pretty good.

But the story is weak... the story that picks up with Alice in the hotel makes no sense, and there's not much attempt to explain any of it. And these characters are awful. From the start, the four travelers come across as a bunch of self-absorbed, arrogant jerks. Seth the "goth" guy is particularly punchable. David and Elise are okay, but the former is pretty unbearable at the start. The tighten up a bit and get better as the trouble starts hitting them, but by that point I really had lost all interest in them. Some people have mentioned Sarah Hyland as being a star of some sort, but I've never heard of her or seen her show, and in this movie she's just your average "good girl" that you get in a horror movie... ends up being the Scream Queen. But she's not all that impressive... more irritating towards the end than anything else, really.

And the ending... meh.

If you don't expect much from your horror movies and are a very generous sort, it's possible you could give this a 4, I suppose. I was originally going to give this a 1, but that's not fair given the number of staggeringly awful horror films out there (like "American Poltergeist", "Ouija Experiment 2", etc).