Among the Shadows - Tra le ombre

First I should mention that I got to see this with two friends for free - if you search in the right spot and add "Lifetime movie" to the title you will find that someone has already pirated this piece of dross onto the internet.

This will never become a cult classic since it's not "awful but funny", it's just plain awful. The plot is impossible to follow, the actors are amateurish and some are downright impossible to understand, the lighting is abominable, werewolves and vampires come and go for no discernible reason, there's no continuity between scenes and . . . well I could go on but why bother.

And then there's this, what is the need of a smoke machine for an interior scene?

Since Lindsay Lohan is the only recognizable name in the cast(except maybe Charlotte Beckett), let's talk a bit about her performance:

• She delivers every line in a flat, gravely voice.
• Her eyes dart to the left and right as she reads her lines.
• I'm going to guess she blew off coming in every day after a while. In some scenes, it's obvious that they just put her in front of a green screen and spliced her in with actors who already filmed the scene without her.
• There are actually times when there's a body double who neither looks or sounds like Lohan reading her lines. BTW, this is not a bad thing since the anonymous person is a more convincing actress than Lohan.
• The only good thing is she's not in a whole lot of the film, at least for the 50 minutes or so that I managed to watch this.

Now let's talk about what's good about the film, or at least what didn't repulse me, and that would be the aforementioned Charlotte Beckett. She's pretty, she looks good in black, she's a passable actress who doesn't need to read her lines off of a large piece of markerboard. That's about it.

To sum it up, this will never be a cult favorite but it could be the final wooden stake in the heart of Lohan's career. On the other hand, that Saudi Arabian production of Lohan starring in an all female film about an American woman who comes to teach a harem about God knows what sounds intriguing (said no one, ever.)

I was giving this movie a shot because it's nothing else was on regular cable until Lindsey and the other female actor were in a "scene together", but they weren't actually in the scene together at all. It was so odd, and almost a joke. They pieces the conversation together. It was laughable. Don't waste any of your time. Honestly, I'm shocked someone released this movie.

A Brussels secret detective who comes from a long descent of werewolves uses her inherent abilities to unwind the conspiracy following her uncle's death.

Now we've all seen bad movies. But this film fails on every level of competency, I wouldn't even consider it a film at all. It's pitifully strung together with poor editing, sloppily moved along with endless stock footage. Every scene with Lohan has been poorly edited into the film either with a green screen or one of those suspiciously high-quality Skype calls we see so often in films. A scene near the end even uses leftover B-roll footage on the very green screen she's sat in front of for the whole movie.

The sad thing is this is Lohan's first movie in over 5 years, I just ask myself why this? I want a comeback from her as much as the next person but this film failed on every level imaginable.

Half a star! Add this movie to you "Must Miss This Hot Mess" list. Unless you just dying to see Lindsay Lohan. In that case you will be a very happy unit.

This will be in the bin at Dollar Tree soon, and will be marked 50% off.