Voodoo Moon

I liked the idea of Voodoo Moon and I was particularly excited to see a movie with Charisma Carpenter and John Amos. I was so disappointed! The storyline was incomprehensible. There were elements introduced throughout the movie--an appearance in a graveyard, pictures drawn, and childhood memories--that never added up to anything pertinent to the storytelling. As for the sister, her power was alluded to many times, but never really explained. Worse, the acting stunk. I say this, despite the fact that I adore Charisma Carpenter and respect John Amos. I usually applaud their acting, but that is impossible to do with their lifeless performances in Voodoo Moon. The movie committed the worst possible crime: it bored me. I couldn't keep my attention on it. Many opportunities for suspense are wasted by the director and the actors. There is absolutely nothing to recommend in this film.

I watched this flick mainly because of the main actors: Eric Mabius, Charisma Carpenter, Jeffrey Combs, Dee Wallace and John Amos. The storyline caught my attention. I thought this would be at least interesting. It was horrible! I'd give this the SUPER ISHTAR Award! Even Ishtar was a better film! Attack of the Killer Tomatoes would have won an Academy Award if compared to Voodoo Moon. I even love camp B-grade films but this one was F-Grade! It is totally slug slow and boring. The script writing and directing are incredibly lame, the acting is lethargic (did they feed the actors Thorazine?). Did Kevin VanHook win a lottery in some state to fund this fiasco? I could have done better with an 8mm video camera and local talent! Because I needed to see the end, it took me three different days to finally finish Voodoo Moon. I started and stopped the DVD several times. The initial plot was interesting, but the development of the storyline was so infantile. There were many open holes that were never filled in. The ending of this movie just drops off into some sort of empty black hole. Kevin VanHook may have some good credits to his name for video effects but after looking at the other films he as written, directed or produced, I think I will totally avoid any future films he purports to deliver. Pure BUNK!

I have only seen the first 45 minutes. It's horrid. The acting is stilted. That actor from "Reincarnator" (whatever) is an energy sucker. He huffs and puffs and looks as if he might inflate and explode. That's not acting. That's behaving. Of course he's always been a total ham. CC is herself, sweet, pleasant and Cordelia. The film is shot on what looks like 16 mm school grade stock. The camera work looks like a drunk monkey stole the tripod and ran around with it while the actors just kept speaking. The scene with the priest and the cop is some of the hokiest, idiotically juvenile dialogue and infestation of hideous special effects "artistry" (please: the cop raising up? You could plainly see where the wires were jerking up his pants, and the priest fires two bullets at the guys's chest, and a third squib exploded accidentally!)

CC deserves to have actual roles, not washed out copies of Cordelia Chase.

I'm a huge Charisma Carpenter fan. This said, I was disappointed by this movie. Her charm did not come through, in fact NONE of the actors seemed to be doing much acting in this movie. I think the best performances came from Rik Young who played the evil Daniel, and Jeffrey Combs who seemed to have fun playing a good zombie, although his performance was terrible until the point where his character died, then he became downright hilarious, in a probably not really trying to be funny kind of way, I'm not sure if I was laughing at his character or with the actor playing the character.

The sad thing is, I've seen most of these actors/actresses do great jobs in other shows/films, I would have to blame the director on this flop.

Generally poorly explained happenings, flat acting, and terrible special effects. But Charisma is still beautiful.

I really think that 10, maybe 15 years down the line, this movie will be fondly looked upon as a horror classic. I had seen Kevin VanHook's "The Fallen Ones" on SciFi and was quite impressed with it (much more than most of their movies), plus having Jeffrey Combs (a personal all-time favorite since "Re-Animator"), John Amos, and Dee Wallace (along with a great sticker price!) made it a good choice to pick up.

This film kicks ass from the opening scenes and doesn't let go until the end. I only wish it had been a bit longer and gone into some greater depth and detail. Kevin VanHook is clearly a fan's filmmaker, and I'm willing to bet he makes movies the way he'd like to see them as a fan. The budget may be relatively low on this one, but the effects are first-rate (which should really be expected, considering that VanHook comes from an effects technician background). VanHook is one filmmaker I'm going to be keeping an eye out for - he may not ever graduate to the big leagues, let's face it, big-name genre directors are few and far between (which is a shame in and of itself), but I'm hoping his writing/directing resume becomes a long one.

I highly recommend picking up a copy and sitting down to watch it with a bunch of munchies, as you won't want to pause it to run to the kitchen. My only gripe on the DVD is that there's no Director's Commentary - but it does have a couple of Making Of/Behind-The-Scenes extras.