The Lockdown Hauntings

DISCLOSURE: I'm a friend of a cast member, so I must recuse myself from giving a rating and instead, I'll submit a brief interpretation.

"Fear is something horrible, an atrocious sensation, a sort of decomposition of the soul," (Guy de Maupassant, 'Le Peur' 1882).

A bustling, vibrant metropolis, eerily, unnervingly quiet; these are the opening images that lead us into the surreal paranoid world of London and the UK under Lockdown. We are introduced to the characters who fear for loved ones, for their lives, for their uncertain futures. All they know is that they have no control or power over unseen and unforeseeable events.

Against this background, a serial killer has emerged, elusive in the extreme; not only are they no signs of break-ins, there are no forensic clues at all. To compound the mystery, the detective assigned to the case is herself under quarantine, waiting for test results to see if she is infected.

The unknown unseen killer could represent COVID and how easily it can be transmitted. We sense the alienation and impotence of the characters, lacking the support of friends, family and institutions. Everyone is alone and vulnerable and the deaths are the personification of extreme paranoia in extreme circumstances. We are not scared of what we know, but of what we don't know.

'The Lockdown Hauntings' is a valuable source for how people lived and felt in the early 2020s as even at time of writing, we don't know if the vaccines work (solve the case) or if new mutant variants will arise ...

I'd just write "zzzz" and you'd know everything you need to know about this movie. But IMDB wants more words.

Tony Todd does a small cameo, wow, I guess his die-hard followers had to rate this higher than it's worth because of that fact. Still doesn't make it any better than a "zzzz" flick.

I notoriously ALWAYS finish a movie. My wife even makes fun of me for it, calling it a waste of my time.

Well... I found my white whale. The first movie in literally decades I couldn't be bothered to finish. With just 12 minutes left, I couldn't justify the waste of time and braincell function to keep on watching this movie with a, honestly, interesting concept.

I forgive the actors. We all have to start somewhere, right? But the writing, pasing, cinematography and sound design... I just couldn't anymore.

I spend the 12 minutes doing something stimulating, by cleaning the vegetable drawer in my refrigerstor.

Compared to some of the Hollywood rubbish, this movie although low budget was actually not bad mostly all women cast and British made but I've seen a lot worse.

The scares where convincing as well as the acting.

It's not a blockbuster but considering the low budget for this movie.

It's a good attempt at horror.

I wasn't going to bother with a review of such a terribly inane move, but there were so many high rated reviews that I felt people needed to know they were being lied to.

This movie was made obviously for low information horror fans who are the only ones who could possibly buy this premise.

Filled with bad acting and stupid scenarios, it's an absolute insult to our intelligence.

They used that guy from Candy Man to give it credence I guess, but don't waste you time on this one. Even he can't save it.

It's not scary - it's just plain stupid and full of nonsense.

The odd thing is that there are a dozen 8 to 10 reviews for this but the average is below 4, telling us that most people just didn't bother to tell us how bad it really was. And it's likely that the high reviews are from people involved in the production, because anyone who really gave it an honest review would not give it more than a 4.

I gave it lower because it was exploitative to an ignorant number of viewers.