Dead of the Nite

I watched Dead of the Nite at the Gold Coast Film Festival in Australia and enjoyed the film from the Hitchcock style opening credits all the way to the great twist at the end.

The film is an unusual combination of traditional filmmaking and the found footage style. It works very well as it pulls you from one storyline to the other without taking you too far out of caring for the characters.

The best thing about the film is Tony Todd. Although he's only in it for about 15 minutes he steals every scene he's in and his voice truly is legendary!

The young cast are OK, though at times it seems a little am-dram, and the night vision can grate on you a little, but the cutting to the traditional daytime stuff helps break it up. Also thankfully it's not all shaky cams that make you sick. The pacing is thoughtful and builds tension, and though the director uses a few cliché tactics to create the jumps, they still work very effectively.

Overall I gave it a 10/10 (which is based on the fact they made it for only $20,000) but it is more as 7/10 though still worth a watch when it comes out on DVD.

An important reason for me, to get the movie and watch it was Tony Todd. He is always so magnificent and when he is in a movie even in a small part, you always talk about his role. I really love some actors like him, Robert England etc and I really want to see them again, having an appearance in a movie that is more than a few minutes.

So back to this movie: a film crew goes to a haunted house for their internet show. The caretaker (Tony Todd) warns them about the house and that the doors during the night will be locked. The film team doesn't listen and they want to stay in the house during the night. Alone… in the dark... In the night … no one can hear them…

Lucky for us, the footage was retrieve and so we can watch what happened to them. I am really tired of the 'found footage' type of movies. When it was done for the first time you had fun watching something completely different. Now so many movies are done like this. Some are good like Rec (2007), but most of them

I really wanted to like this and get into it but this is truly one of the worst films I have seen. I got maybe 45mins - 1 hour in before giving up and deciding to write that hour of my life off as a mistake.

The acting is weak, some of the camera work is weird considering we are meant to be watching camcorder footage, the chief detective guy is laughable and always angry for some bizarre reason and the story just doesn't go anywhere.

Stay away from this at all costs, it really is not worth your time at all, but feel free to partake in some other fun activities like the following instead:

• watch paint dry - watch a puddle evaporate - count your feet

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. What started as a promising, if unoriginal, British slant on the now common theme of "Ghost Hunters meet evil spirits in a Haunted House" (think Grave Encounters), quickly gave way to a rather humdrum plot that was very disappointing.

Despite the presence of Tony "Candyman" Todd, the acting seemed at best to be that of a provincial amateur dramatic group (think The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen's Guild Dramatic Society), but not as interesting. "Characters" quickly revert to stereotype. Todd tries to make up for this by hammily overacting, although he does manage to steal every scene he's in (not difficult).

The "police station" scenes are wholly unconvincing and the "policemen" laughable. With numerous bog-standard crime fare on telly and in films, surely it wouldn't be too difficult to make these scenes reasonably realistic? Er, no.

The "twist" in the plot is hardly surprising, although the reason for it is strangely bizarre. The denouement comes as a blessing for various reasons. I can't remember welcoming the closing titles in a film more readily. Not good. Avoid.

I must say I had been looking forward to watching this for quite some time, and it wasn't just because of Tony Todd (CANDYMAN) having a somewhat sufficient role in it. No. I was intrigued by the plot. A found footage film about the paranormal with a slasher element added in for good measure. Take that and surround it all with an ongoing detective investigation and you have DEAD OF THE NITE.

I really wanted to like this film, and I tried, but it just couldn't deliver. The acting was nothing spectacular, but better than one would expect coming from a film with a $20k budget. The kills were a major let down, very unimpressive and practically bloodless. I really had a big problem with the filming/editing. As we are watching the found footage from multiple cameras, it is edited to look like a normal film instead of what actual found footage would look like. It was also quite predictable. Several things were apparent before they happened. I knew the "twist" ending long before it was revealed.

Needless to say (but I'll say it anyway), I was very disappointed. DEAD OF THE NITE had the potential to be a really decent film, but ultimately it failed. Not even the presence of the great Tony Todd could save it. What a shame.