Crazy Eights

Jennifer Jones (Dina Meyer), Father Lyle Dey (George Newbern), Gina Conte (Traci Lords), Wayne Morrison (Dan De Luca), Brent Sykes (Frank Whaley), and Beth Patterson (Gabrielle Anwar) are childhood friends. The opening text reveals a past private behavioral study used some 600 children in its experiments. The six friends are reunited after the death of another friend. Their group called themselves the Crazy Eights.

There are a few familiar faces from the 90's and early 2000's. That's the main reason to check this out. The premise is concocted simplicity. It's bare-bones and constructed only to bring these people to an isolated place. It's a low budget horror. It's a bunch of actors running around in one place. The scares are not that scary. The story isn't much. The actors are who they are. It's nice to see them again, but this is not anything.

I got sucked into this by people who said it was scary and a good psychological thriller.

I must have missed the scary parts because it just didn't have any. I heard screaming, but there wasn't anything there.

The background music was very good and helped to set the tone, but nothing else delivered on that setting.

None of the actors did any work to impress me. It seems as if they were just collecting a check for a weekend of work.

I love the After dark films, but this is probably the worst one I have seen.

Think session 9 meets the big chill but not as good as either. The film is pretty good however a little slow in bits but rather creepy and involving. Lords and Meyers give two great performances and the film making is original if not terribly creative. It centers on a group of friends who discover a secret when one of them passes. Haunted by ghostly visions they decide to confront it at the place where it all started. It has some nice jump out scares but ewarns it's spooky mood modeslty. A decent film and definitely worth a look. A nice additon to horrorfest library. My one big problem with this film is the questionable villain and unpolished look the film carries besides that it's pretty good.

Six people come together after the death of a childhood friend and begin to unravel the secret behind a past they can't remember while trapped in some abandoned hospital kind of place, and thus begins the very many problems with Crazy Eights.

The film is basically one very big collection of plot holes, beyond what I tried to sum up never really made sense, because for someone like me who has a long attention span, I can clearly say that barely anything is explained, for example, what was the purpose of the experiments? why was the dead girl so vengeful if she died accidentally? And how can a group childhood friends remember each other but they don't remember a thing about their childhood? I don't know if the director tried to make one of those films that's suppose to stay with you for a long time after you've watched it, wondering about the same things I just pointed out, well he did, only after I watched it, I didn't really like it.

Another problem is the score, while watching the film I noticed that the score practically played throughout the film, I can probably account for less than three seconds for when I didn't hear it, and it was more annoying than anything else, for the majority of the film it just played, it didn't help set the tone or create a certain mood or help the film build any kind tension, it just played and muffled a lot of the dialog.

The acting was so so, but whatever kind of film the filmmakers tried to make obviously doesn't work, want my advice? Broaden out the storyline leaving fewer plot holes and make less use of the score and more use of sound and lighting effects to create a lot of atmosphere, I am sure it'll work better.

Unfortunately, the next movie in my After Dark alphabetical lineup was not quite as good. With a cast that has had a somewhat undeserved amount of attention placed on it, "Crazy Eights" is a story of 6 friends, reunited by another friend's funeral, who in following out said friend's last wishes, find themselves trapped in an abandoned medical facility, that as it turns out, holds the key to an event they all shared, but had blocked out of their memories. Despite the somewhat promising premise, the film turns out to be about as well written as my last sentence (can anyone say "run-on"?). The dialogue is generally bad, the plot developments are easily figured out way in advance, and some events come off as just silly. When one character manages to severely break his leg, one can't help but wonder just how clumsy he is to have done all THAT in a little tumble. There are some scenes that seem a bit creepy, but they are all to often ruined by an obnoxious synth-string theme that keeps popping up and/or very sloppy editing. While not exactly awful, this film is not really recommendable. So far, I'm saying this is this year's equivalent of "The Gravedancers" in the first 'fest. And in case you're wondering, that's bad.