The Night Before Halloween

I'm watching this movie right now and the fact that I'm on my phone, writing this review, is enough to show you how bored I am.

It's ok, but slow and confusing kinda tbh. Wouldn't watch it again. Stupid ending too

Some kids play a prank on a friend who ends up electrocuted in the process. So they do the logical thing--drop her off in front of the hospital and escape. Back at home they come up with a story. One of them borrows another's car and tries to escape from something chasing him. He crashes but manages to make a video before he dies.

A year later all the kids start getting texts from the injured girl who is actually in a coma. They go the hospital. There we learn of a stain on the ceiling and flies. One of the kids who's gone missing reappears and shows them the video of the dead guy where things are explained. So it turns out that guy was cursed and the only way to pass on the curse is buy getting someone else killed. Because they were all part of the prank now they are cursed and have this night, the night before Halloween to make someone else die or they will die.

The police are sort of after them and so is the curse--a bunch of flies that can take on the shape of a creature or of weapons. Of course the kids will have different ways of dealing with this, some will be fine with trying to get someone else killed others reject the idea and will try to figure out some other way out.

The Night Before Halloween is a surprisingly good production for a Syfy movie. Unfortunately only the production is good. Everything else isn't. In particular the story, which would be more suited for a short. The problem is that all we focus on is these unremarkable kids we can't even care about. It's actually a relief to see some adults, in the form of the cops. It's also Anthony Lemke who in the role of the main detective gives the most convincing performance. Surprisingly, this movie is all business. There's not much of an attempt at romance, or comedy or anything else for that matter. The problem is that the business of this movie just doesn't convince. It would have helped if the curse didn't come in the utterly unscary form of flies. The idea itself of a curse that has to be resolved in 24 hours isn't a bad idea nor is it new. More should have been done with the idea if an additional writer would have been hired. Granted, this is a pretty bland movie for teens and about teens, I'm not sure though even teens would enjoy this.

I don't know if executives bother to read scripts anymore. How could this film have gotten green-lit? The characters are half dimensional, the story doesn't make any sense, everything happens very conveniently for the plot to unfold in a tired, uninteresting, and convoluted way. No tension, no suspense, nothing of real interest at all. Lots of misplaced jump scares, yet the film has absolutely no atmosphere which is essential for a horror film. I give credit to the actors for doing what they could with an exceptionally poorly executed, amateurish script. The dialogue is ridiculously bad. The worst part is that there is no catalyst to invoke the villain, who as it turns out is not very scary at all. SyFy has got to pick up their game. This is garbage.

Junk like this plays better on some YouTube channel.

Sure, this 2016 horror movie, from writer and director Sheldon Wilson, was one that I had never heard bout when I sat down to watch it. But with it being a horror movie, then I needed no persuasion to check it out, given my love of all things horror.

The storyline in the movie made zero sense, but it proved to be entertaining enough in terms of being a horror movie. I can't fully comprehend what writer and director Sheldon Wilson was thinking here when penning the script for the movie.

I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in the movie, which is actually something I do enjoy when I sit down to watch a movie. And I will say that the acting performances were fair.

The special effects in the movie were okay. I mean, whenever the swarm of flies or insects was seen, it looked good, but whenever you had a single or few flies on the screen it was pretty terrible CGI.

"The Night Before Halloween" is suitable for a single viewing, but doesn't have the contents to support more than just that one single viewing. Would I recommend this movie to horror fans? Well, sure, if you are a newcomer to the genre, but if you're a life-long horror fan, nah, the movie just doesn't bring anything exciting or new to the genre.

My rating of writer and director Sheldon Wilson's 2016 movie "The Night Before Halloween" lands on a generous five out of ten stars.