Ghost Month

Everything about it says a movie made by college kids. I am loath to do down anyone or anything and usually look for the positives in all situations, but having just seen this film I feel I should warn anyone considering watching it. Don't! Everything is bad. The plot can best be described as weak, the twist, more like a slight turn, can easily be guessed at. The acting is unconvincing and I'm sure in places they were waiting for cues. The directing is poor, in fact rather than waste your time having to read further - avoid this movie as everything is so poor. There was 'one' jump moment and the rest of it was sheer boredom. My advice is buy a tin of paint, stick a pencil in it and watch it dry. It'll be far more entertaining.

For those not familiar with Danny Draven he's an old school filmmaker most well known for many independent and Full Moon pictures. Generally his works are pretty poor and cheesy nonsense at their best.

Here he writes and directs and has a considerably higher budget than usual, but can he do something with it? Absolutely not.

The Offerings tells the story of a girl who moves out into the middle of nowhere to be housekeeper. But with her employers having a sinister secret, the house being full of spirits and her psychotic ex boyfriend hot on her heels nothing goes the way she planned.

To the films credit the sfx look quite good, sadly they are rare and incredibly brief. Considering the budget and the near unknown cast this is unexplainable and Draven really has no excuse.

The plot is a jumbled mess, the cinematography is most poor and despite showing some promising signs early on the film really has very little going for it.

Draven will no doubt continue working for many years to come, I think he should stop or at very least go back to Fullmoon as their movies have a charm even he couldn't ruin.

The Good:

Some of the sfx are quite good

The Bad:

Poor sound balancing

Very amateurishly shot in places

Movie is an all round mess

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

I'd putting money down now, if I looked at his birth certificate it will not read Daniel Draven

Holy crap! Or should I say spiritual crap, actually, I'm just gonna go with plain simple - crap! This is a movie about a pretty teenage maid who takes a job house keeping for a couple of women - Chinese women! Yes, it's the east Asia thing again, because of course that's what makes a scary film isn't it? No of course not, but every other horror director in the US thinks it is! Why don't they just set up a camera in Beijing, the fear factor would be immense.

Of course, as the women are Chinese it is only right that they are very spiritual and follow the ancient ways (blimey, it's so stereotyped I was just waiting for one them to pull out nun-chucks and perform a spinning back kick!), and it just happens to be 'Ghost Month'. So rituals are performed every night to keep the scary demons at bay, until of course the maid cleans up some charcoal! Then the scary stuff begins, or at least tries to.

Terrible cgi, bad makeup and worst of all, no scares. A few 'jump' moments are there, but they hardly register on the fear factor. Acting is appalling, back-story is dreadful and unneeded well, unneeded in the way it was done here anyway. The 'twist' isn't really a twist as you can see whats coming a mile away.

Overall, this is the worst horror movie I've seen for a long, long time. Avoid at all cost 1/10

Simply and briefly a tragic failure and a massive waste of time and, most likely money, mostly from the director's part but also for anyone who decides to give this visual and acoustic crime against even the modest of standards a shot. I gave it a three out of ten merely due to the fact that I saw potential in the idea for, perhaps, a Hollywood blockbuster which, if developed accordingly by a 'slightly' more talented, charismatic and experienced director (with a wee bit of common sense when it comes to cinematography) could have worked. By the way, it does not qualify to be called a movie, film or even a flick. Stay away and you shall have a chance to spend your time on better stuff.

Saw 'The Offerings' being fond of horror/thriller regardless of budget (even if not my favourite genre), and the cover was cool. Was less taken by the concept though, which sounded ridiculous. Being behind on my film watching and reviewing, with a long to watch and review list that keeps getting longer, it took me a while to get round to watching and reviewing.

Unfortunately, do have to agree with the low rating and the poor reviews. 'The Offerings' is one of those films that never took off, starting off not very interestingly and never recovered and progressively got worse, particularly in the near-unwatchable later stages. Never judge a film without seeing the whole thing and wanted to not make 'The Offerings' an exception, so gave it a fair chance.

The location is also suitably spooky. It is agreed too that the too infrequent and brief special effects are surprisingly not bad, having seen so many films recently where the effects have been one of the biggest problems.

However, so much brings 'The Offerings' down. All the acting is either over-histrionic or disinterested, both in a few cases, and the direction is so phoned in and pedestrian, one gets the sense that the director showed no interest in the film at all. Too much of the soundtrack is intrusive and annoying, made worse by the excessive and obvious sound effects that just cheapens the mood. The film looks drab generally and like it was made in haste, the photography especially betrays that with its amateurishness.

Where 'The Offerings' most underwhelms is the writing and story. The writing is incredibly lazy, it's awkward in dialogue, very confused as a result of not tying things up or going into full detail and doesn't feel complete. The story suffers from a very limp pace, apparent early on and gets slower and slower until an interminably dragged out second half. It further suffers from feeling too much like a short film stretched out with a lot of useless padding. The stereotypical characters are both bland and annoying and the inconsistent and illogical motivations bring them down further.

For a film billed as a horror, there is very little interesting and nothing remotely scary which makes a waste of such a spooky-looking location. The scares and thrills are too few, barely any even, and are far too predictable, anaemic and weakly timed to make impact, with the dull pacing and obvious sound effects cheapening them significantly. 'The Offerings' doesn't engage let alone thrill, the more it progressed the duller, predictable and more nonsensical it became for a premise that was already ridiculous. The ending leaves very little impact, very contrived and could have been rounded off better.

In summary, very poor on the whole. 2/10 Bethany Cox