Horror in the Attic

Promising in some ways. It looks like it might go somewhere - until the last half hour, which becomes increasingly unpleasant and confusing, climaxing in an arrogant or incompetent refusal to explain and fill in the loose ends. The performances and photography are quite competent. Unfortunately, it all collapses like a schizoid house of cards at the end. When it works, it feels like a combination of Suspiria and Jacob's Ladder.

Trevor (Andras Jones from Nightmare on Elm Street 4 and Sorority babes in the Slimeball Bowl-a-Rama) kills his girlfriend and is sentenced to a stay in the half way house for loons by Dr. Elk (genre staple Jeffrey Combs). But things are not nearly what they seem. I wanted to like this I really did, and to it's merit it did start off rather well, but as it went on it became a casualty of too many twists spoiling the stew. The ending is anti-climatic as well and left me thinking "Is that it???" I read that this is a 'thinking persons' horror film. I'm sorry but that's pretty laughable as anyone with half a brain could follow it. Mindfu@k movies can be good, when they have a point to them (ie. Fight Club, the Twin peaks series) But this isn't one of those.And Seth Green isn't really the best actor in the world to put it diplomatically.

My Grade: C-

DVD Extras: both widescreen and fullscreen versions; behind the scenes featurette; and Theatrical trailer

Eye Candy: Beth Bates shows everything, Shannon Cleary goes full frontal

Edgy? Stylish? Though-provoking?

More like Unoriginal, Stupid, and Confusing. This movie was a monumental letdown, all things considered. For starters, the plot was a messy rehash of several other "successful" movies. The writer must have been watching Fight Club, Vanilla Sky, and the Truman Show on 3 different TVs and thought "Wow, if I could only rip all 3 of these off, I could make the most mind-bogglingly retarded waste of film known to man!" The main character, Noname McNeedsActingLessons, looked like some horribly distorted charicature of George W. Bush. Seth Green, who enjoyed fame in questionably "mainstream movies," figured he could make an easy paycheck with this one by doing a bad Brad Pitt impression from 12 Monkeys. The plot jumps so much from one ripoff to another that I can just see the director thinking, "I can't wait until THIS scene, it'll blow their minds." Why yes, it did blow my mind... I WAS TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHAT WAS GOING ON! "But it's deep man," says the director, pointing out all the complex metaphors. About as deep as Corky Romano. Ted Raimi's character, apparently commenting on the plot, said it best, "There's too many variables." Yes, Ted, too many indeed.

Skip this one. If you fall into a trap and happen to see it, skip forward to Ted Raimi's scenes. He's the savior to an otherwise convoluted mess of pretentious crap.

This movie has exactly the right balance between horror and humor and, more importantly, between revealing too much and revealing too little. Some questions are answered at the end, but some are not, and I for one like that some are not. It is not a pat, boil-in-the-bag horror movie. It is intelligent and requires that you pay attention, but it's not as if that's terribly hard to do, because it succeeds in being entertaining throughout. Those expecting pornographic vivisections will be disappointed; compared to movies like "Hellraiser," this film is more rightly classified as "psychological thriller" than horror. It remains an excellent movie, however, and if you don't get it maybe you ought to watch again. Pay a bit more attention next time.

Anyone can make a disjointed tale with blood, sex and drugs, that has no plot line, has a lot of inexplicable happenings and has no tie up at the end and we are supposed to think its really deep? Is that what passes for a psychological thriller now in 2006? Spare me. I watched the whole thing and I was bored silly. It wasn't even done well enough for me to want to know what the real story was.

There must be a sane starting point at either the beginning or end. it certainly won't be in the middle...Something to hang onto. This one did neither. Waste of time and I am not a kid with a short attention span.

However, The I Inside with Ryan Phillipe and Robert Sean Leonard is excellent and did make me think. Check it out.