Ceremony 666

This movie was a disappointment. It appears as if some film students got together, had some great effects ideas (eg, Satan costume) and not that bad a story idea. The problem came when the actors were just plain old, bad. For the rental price it is OK for something to watch to pass the time, but not great for parties.

I first saw "Ceremony" after my friend and I rented it at Blockbuster. We were looking for a good movie to get and were torn between "Something About Mary" and "Ceremony". Now "Ceremony" had a very cool cover (gothic lettering, big ol' demon on the front), so we naturally assumed that it was an awseome flick, which led to us renting it. I wish we got "Something About Mary". After the first 10 minutes of this snorefest we were about ready to throw the VCR out the window. I won't spoil the ending, because I was too confused by the uneven plot to know what happened (I also stopped paying attention mid-way through. Maybe that's why). To sum up, A very slow-moving film with bad acting, bad dialouge, and something that looks like grape jelly being used for blood; that is "Ceremony". So if you are considering seeing this movie, beware! It is not what you expect. They say, "Don't judge a book by its cover," and for "Ceremony", it's true (except it's a movie, not a book).

I found the movie terrifying and realistic. If anything, I'm not a religious individual. Even though the movie has much of it, the supernatural parts is what caught my attention the most. The whole setup was realistic. I've seen a lot worse movies. I give this a 5 because I believe it deserves at least that much credit. If you want to get scared, I recommend watching this because it is quite realistic and suspiciously, makes you wonder if something like this either happened or could actually occur. Not many movies are made up like this. In a way, it has it's own glow like the movie "Dead Meat" which is a zombie horror film. It's not the average zombie movie you've seen in theaters.

The video box cover for this film looks great, featuring a big nasty Devil with white boiled-egg eyeballs and some pretty cool looking rams horns. The premise is even pretty interesting: a clockwork device that has been running for thousands of years is finally winding down. At the stroke of midnight, it will release an irritable fallen angel, and it is up to a group of devoutly religious students to keep it trapped within the mechanism for a few more thousand years.

Unfortunately, this film falls a few miles short of actually being good. The budget is substandard, the actors seem to have flunked out of drama school and the whole thing turns into a messy, sloppy, cheap looking splatter film. The Devil is still decently icky looking, but it doesn't get a lot of screen time. Instead, we get a possession scene featuring a giant tequila worm crawling down the throat of an annoying girl who has been tied up and unwisely (and conveniently) left alone in a dark room. Yeah, that's exactly what I would do if a demon was loose in MY house, uh huh. The ending is cheesy and not even kindly old Forrest Ackerman in a wheelchair can save this putrid mess.

I give this film 2 stars - one for the Devil make-up and one more for the original idea, which unfortunately goes nowhere and never develops. It's a shame because, in the right hands, this could have been a pretty good film with a cool new story to tell.

"The Ceremony" is nothing less than the cinematic adaptation of the wet sludge that pools as the bottom of landfill. Don't be fooled by the great looking screen grabs on the back of the box; the makers of "The Ceremony" apparently shot the fist four minutes on 35mm, then shot the rest of the film on 3/4" U-matic video... with a $10 Radio Shack microphone... that they probably stole. The "demon-angel" that is released into the world looks like an octogenarian that escaped from an nursing home who just wandered onto a film set. I will never get back the precious minutes spent watching college students blunder around a 2,000 square foot home like it was the Biltmore estate, lost in the dark and unable to accomplish the simple act of opening a door. It's a pitiful attempt. Not even fun-bad... not even bad-bad... just pitiful.