7 Nights of Darkness

This film was pretty well done, and on an impressively low budget.

Once the film gets rolling, there are some pretty good "creepy" scares. Not too many of the make you jump type scares, but ones that give a bit of the skin crawl.

Early in the film though, there is so much loud dialogue and over-acting from the actors that it really takes away from one of the greatest elements of horror and horror cinematography: ambient sound.

Far too much needless argument and banter between characters early in the set.

The rest of the film is well done, and the director makes good use of low light for effect, and they picked a great setting for the film to take place.

6/10

After the popularity of the Paranormal Activity franchise many companies decided to cash in and make their own similar micro budget movies of the same genre. One company made 9 movies under the franchise name of Paranormal Investigations, this is one of them.

Filmed for an estimated $5000 budget this follows a group of reality TV show participants spending 7 nights in an abandoned asylum in order to win $1 million! As with every other one of the Paranormal Investigations movies I've seen it's shoddily made with very little actually happening and a whole lot of shaky camera work & senseless screaming.

To it's credit near the end 7 Nights Of Darkness does manage to get under the viewers skin a bit, but it's simply too late.

Another incredibly boring 90 minutes of lifeless ghost genre "Action"

The Good:

Couple of creepy moments near the end

The Bad:

The abandoned asylum thing has gotten really old now

Scene separators are annoying

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Mens lavatories are notoriously haunted

Buckets are scary

Threatening to sexually molest an unconscious restrained woman is totally an okay thing to do

I am a big fan of the 'found footage' genre and really appreciate the films that make you feel like you are there.

I think its hard to get a lot of character development in these type of films, so I don't usually decide if i like or dislike the characters..I look more for atmosphere with tense, suspenseful scary moments..and the feeling of it being real...no blatantly 'fake' over the top acting.

However, due to the first 30 minutes of this movie being full of useless chatter, arguing, and over acting, I was really irritated before any of the good (scary) stuff happened . ..there was a little more useless chatter here and there throughout the movie and it gave me the feeling that I couldn't stand these people and I wanted to get the hell away from them. This effected how I viewed the rest of the movie...

The movie had good atmosphere and some scary suspenseful moments, but I didn't really enjoy them due to my continued irritation and dislike of these people.

I am a fan of "found footage" films. This one started out much the same way as others in the genre do, a groups of strangers spending the night in a haunted house. But comparatively, this film falls short of its competitors.

Unfortunately, none of the characters were likable enough to care what befalls them. Likable characters I believe is a pretty important factor in found footage films because they are the ones revealing the story to you. But in this film, their acting seemed forced and unnatural, and natural is what you're suppose to be going for in found footage films. The characters didn't even care what was happening to each other, which just compounded the viewers lack of caring about them.

The scares were too few and far between and didn't last very long. They never explain anything about the history of the house they were in, so the viewer couldn't even connect with the ghosts.

The fact that nothing is explained could work for some found footage films, but not this one because it lacked so many other things. The film seemed like someones pet project, with a slightly higher video quality.

I wouldn't see it again and I wouldn't recommend it to fans of the genre.

Decent premise, really annoying beginning. I think that it must be improved in the beginning, the dialogue is so bad. One character in particular is way too annoying, I found myself wishing he would die first. The guy with the dark hair and glasses. It won't take long to figure out who I am talking about.

Like one reviewer said, way too much talking in the first parts. It's like trying to sleep when there's a party in the other room. The voices are just as annoying. Everyone trying to talk at the same time. I almost didn't make it through the first 20 minutes, or the first 5 minutes for that matter, but I stuck it out. I am a sucker for punishment. The acting is very bad. I suck, and I could do a better job. I think a fence post would have pulled it off better.

This movie had the feeling that it was done by a bunch of film students, and somehow it slipped out into the DVD market. A quick look at the credits and you'll see that I am most likely right, if you last to the credits that is, and oh don't miss the extra bit after the credits.

If you can see this for free, watch it simply for how bad it is, but don't go out of your way to see this. Like the idea, but hated the movie? Check out Grave Encounters, they pulled it off way better.

Originally I gave this movie a 4 out of 10, but looking back on it now I think I will change it to a more than generous 3.