Schizo

Archaeologist finds himself drawn to the site where his parents were murdered. There he and his friends are haunted by the ghost of an evil ten year old prince. Acceptable premise and good settings are just not enough to save this flick. The characters and acting are annoying and the script throws out many questions, but never bothers to answer them all. Rated R.

After having seen the gory and over-the-top silly "Dr. Giggles" hundreds of times and loving it more with every viewing, it's rather difficult to accept that Manny Coto's debut film "Playroom" is such an ambitious and serious-minded psycho thriller. I surely wasn't expecting to see an attempt for intellectual horror, set in Eastern Europe and focusing on topics like archeology and child-psychology, so "Dr. Giggles"-fans beware!! It's not even an admirable attempt, as the screenplay is very uninteresting, tedious and a total bunch of nonsense. An obtrusive reporter convinces his girlfriend-editor to travel to Yugoslavia, more particularly to an ancient abbey where he and his archaeologist-father searched for the tomb of a fella named Ilok. After a couple of days of digging with no results, Chris goes completely nuts, has visions of his former imaginary childhood friend and kills the rest of the expedition crew. Big deal! "Playroom" is boring, mainly because you never care for Chris or his bad case of split personality syndrome. This is only the first time I see Christopher MacDonald in a lead role (he usually plays supportive characters) and he already fails to convince us of his acting capabilities. There's absolutely no tension, although Coto seemly tried hard to create some, and the supportive characters are all insufferable. Well, except for the great Vincent Schiavelli but his role is regretfully brief. There also is an irritating lack of gore and there seemly weren't enough budgets to buy a couple of extra light bulbs, as entire sequences are filmed in the dark. One final piece of advise for young scriptwriters: there's NOTHING even remotely scary about kids' imaginary friends! Especially not if these imaginary friends are ordinary looking kids as well.

I rented this just for the heck of it, hoping for some cheap thrills for the night. The story seemed pretty good, too. It's about this archaelogist, Chris, whose family was killed in a cave-like monastery in Serbia when he was a boy. Now, an adult, he wants to return to seek out the burial place of those murdered. He brings with him his girlfriend and editor, Jenny, a photographer, Paul, and Paul's girlfriend, Marcy. But things go awry when the spirit of the killer begins to haunt Chris, slowly changing him from the guy he was to someone quite evil....

On a scale of one-to-ten, I give this a seven. The story was quite good, and developed very well, though I was confused a bit in the middle. Luckily, all is cleared up and explained, but not too much, so that's good. The performances are all quite strong. Jenny was a very likable heroine. And the setting was great. Couldn't have been better. Plus, there are a couple of genuinely scary scenes, especially during the exciting climax where Jenny is forced to play their games, and fights to get away.

But there are some downsides. The movie takes a while to get going. It's not flat-out boring, but it doesn't get very exciting for a bit. And also, the villain, the spirit of the boy that killed Chris's family, is downright laughable. To Chris, he appears as a teenaged boy, and that's alright. But to Jenny--the only other person to see him--he is a very animated zombie, with a goofy face and constant one-liners. It was tough to be afraid of him. Chris was the better of the two, almost a reminder of Jack Nicholson's character in "The Shining," which some could say this film was a bit inspired by. He was much scarier, coming after Jenny through the monastery with a pickaxe.

In any event, this is worth seeing. It's actually an impressive film with some elements that should have boosted its popularity. I recommend it.

The feature length directorial debut of Manny Coto, the man who gave us the entertaining Dr. Giggles, Playroom starts off slow and rather dull. Archeologist Chris (Christopher McDonald) returns to the Yugoslavian ruins where his parents were murdered when he was a child; Chris is accompanied by his girlfriend Jenny (Lisa Aliff) and colleagues Paul and Marcy (James Purcell and Jamie Rose), who help him to try and find the hidden tomb and torture chamber of 10-year-old Prince Ilok, who - as legend has it - was granted eternal life by a Slavic demon.

Much of the first half of the film is taken up by scenes of Chris exploring the old ruin and laboriously digging his way through to a hidden chamber using a pick axe; it's as frustrating for the viewer as it is for Chris, whose slow, tedious task ultimately proves pointless, for when he does finally break through, all he finds is an empty room. Gah! Thankfully, after this, the film gets progressively more unhinged, and much more entertaining as a result. Chris proves to be quite crazy (hence the film's alternative title Schizo), the man holding conversations with his imaginary childhood friend, Daniel, who turns out to be none other than Ilok, still alive and as twisted and sadistic as ever. Egged on by Daniel/Ilok, Chris kills off Paul and Marcy and attempts to do the same to Jenny.

The death scenes are entertaining, although a little too 'dry' for my liking (the rotary saw chair should have been a lot gorier), and Ilok -- a hilarious zombie-like puppet creation -- is pure '90s cheese. The film also features a brief sex scene, Aliff going topless, and a fun performance from Vincent Schiavelli (the subway spook in Ghost) as Roman Hart, the man wrongly convicted for the murder of Chris's parents.

6/10, plus a bonus point for Ilok - he's worth waiting for!

I was surprised to see that the other user reviews for this were so completely positive. I will say that the look of the film was great, the direction well observed and the sets and locations effective. The problems with this film, however, are mainly in the characters--none of them are really likeable(the main characters girlfriend, played by Lisa Aliff is alright) with the annoying award going to the lead actor(Christopher McDonald) who is too over the top for you to have ANY sympathy for him. The main character's "playmate" that appears to him at the old monastery is another annoying character you'd just like to slap. The playmates "real" self is just as bad coming across as a cheap Yoda clone that spouts incredibly lame wisecracks that quickly grows stale. Vincent Schiavelli(who played the weird biology teacher in Fast Times At Ridgemont High), who has ties to the past at the monastery, is somewhat amusing in his whacked out role but when all is said and done this could have been a better movie. Maybe if the characters were a little more likeable or sympathetic the other shortcomings would have been overshadowed but as it stands it's mainly worth checking out for the overall look of the monastery, as well as location shots and a couple of imaginative kills. OK, but not all that special.