Before I Die

The title and the poster imply something. They imply a horror movie of some sort, arguably supernatural. The movie even begins with an assortment of black and white photographs of people apparently around a church. The description in the plot synopsis is so nonspecific and generic as to tell us nothing at all.

And watching this movie, "nothing at all" describes it. It's 1 hour and 52 minutes long, and as of 1 hour and 14 minutes, nothing has happened. Nothing scary, nothing supernatural, nothing that would qualify it as a horror movie, nothing at all relating to the title.

What it essentially is is a drama story about some guy in a small town who becomes deacon of their church, and is also put in charge of fostering a teenaged girl who has a needlessly belligerent boyfriend who all but outright threatens the deacon to his face, as well as loiters around his house late at night.

Suddenly another teenage girl is cryptically taunting the deacon guy, telling him he's going to die that day. Several days pass and absolutely nothing happens. Another guy suddenly starts freaking out and threatening the guy, saying that one of the other people is "not right". Suddenly, he's out in some junkyard looking place with a cross painted on his face. Suddenly some other guy I never saw before stabs him to death. I have no idea who these two people are and this scene only comes up near the end as some big dramatic thing that came out of nowhere and had absolutely no build or attention.

This sort of random nonsense is all over the movie. At one point, an old man dies and the deacon's son randomly says she's planning on burying him upside down. That night, the deacon has a hallucination/nightmare that he's buried alive. Later on, the widow of the dead man angrily confronts the deacon to clarify... she didn't bury her husband upside down. Then she storms off.

All throughout these random, not at all connected events is inexplicably suspenseful, horror-mood music that is completely out of place and leads us on as more nothing happens.

Heaping on this pile of absolute random nonsense, one of the characters, a very distinctive looking black man who looks rather like Georgia Representative John Lewis is named as "Leon" early in the film, then inexplicably he is called "Deion" later on by everyone.

This incoherent, nonexistent storytelling, combined with the very low budget look and horrendous acting gives off very strong vibes of "The Room" but with absolutely none of the charm or hilarity.

this movie comes across like something that was being filmed as it was being written by someone completely unaware of what they are supposed to be writing or filming. It is little more than a random assortment of scenes in a small town with the occasional very slight, minor drama.

This had a lot of potential to be a great movie. Religious thrillers can go in so many directions with plenty to work with.

I really wanted to like this, the description builds it up to be creepy and mysterious. But the movie is unnecessarily long. For the actual storyline, they could have banged it out in an about an hour, but we apparently needed the montages of morning routine and just watching people walk around doing nothing. That being said, it seems and easy thing to act out, yet managed to be awkward and forced. The best actors in it were the pastor's son and guy from Grimm.

Eventually there are snippets to give you pause that it's not just an uncomfortably religious town but something more cult-ish. Not enough to satiate any curiosity about the cult-ish practices.

I should really know better by now on imbd, the better a rating a thriller/horror has, the worse it is.

This movie is not a horror flick so don't watch it if that's what you are looking for.

Unless of course you are looking for the horrifying people you sometimes find in organized religion. Then it might be right up your alley.

The plot does center around a young man who intends to marry his 'girlfriend' at any cost. All under the scrutiny of a Priest and his flock who don't seem to want that to happen. That's just a very basic summation without giving too much away.

So it's really more of a drama I would say. More of a study of human good vs. human evil.

But all in all not really that entertaining or surprising. Just an average film.

It was ok and that was all I can say. No real climax. I wasn't particularly thrilled. But watchable? Sure, why not?

This was so bad it was good. It's knocking on Ed Woods door. It's right up there with the crater lake monster. We're these actors or just street people looking for a free meal. After seeing this I'm in shock