London Haunting (2015) (UK)

aka A Date with Ghosts 

⭐️

A good time in an abandoned abbey is not had when any idiot who stumbles around the admittedly awesome location disturbs the angry ghosts of long-dead monks. Ooops! I really hate it when that happens. Undead monks are cool as fuck so optimism was ravaging my body as the credits began. That optimism became shaky as the credits looked like they belonged in a PS1 game and then atrocious sound design and overbearing piano music played over the opening scene of some bird prettying herself up. Ok. At least I know the money wasn’t spent on an audio team… hope it went to the spooky monks that will be knocking off the British dopes. Awkward edits and B-roll soon followed and I am really burying all of my hopes in the presentation of ghostly monks from beyond the grave. The opening stretch has a couple come across a scared and injured girl while they drive past the abbey. They feel guilty and go back to check on her but judging by the day to night to day trip back, this girl would be long dead upon the unlikable duos return. Their less than convincing performances have me crossing my fingers that every ounce of talent went towards the horrific phantom monks who roam the abbey in search for fresh flesh. Oh no. Night falls, the monks show up looking like heroin addicts with black digital effects for eyes and then day immediately hits and then turns into night again. My head hurts. The couple make their way into the nearby church (which is also cheaply gorgeous) and the ghost monks follow looking like a special effect out of an episode of Goosebumps (the original, budget-strained one). They hide from the ghost monk and find a battered woman stored in a wooden coffin, she has no idea why she’s there. Her last memory is being at her home and her family getting murdered. She warns that the monks are ghosts and they’re trying to open a gateway to Hell. How she knows this, I’m not sure but our leading lady takes her word for it. Her boyfriend, Lee, vanishes and the ghost monks cut him open on an alter and his lady and the coffin lady run in slow motion through the woods. My head hurts. Green screen special effects that were pieced together by someone who has never used them and a narrative that feels like someone had a script which read “GHOST MONKS! AAAARGH?!” combine with the poor everything else to let me know that no money was saved for anything because there wasn’t any money to begin with. The monks hate holy water and crosses… yet still walk within the church and several Halloween store props are put to use. PART 2 hits the screen and text from Jack Foster’s diary entry lets us know that he can’t escape the abbey and he also can’t spell “escape”. Black and white footage which may have been taken during a tour and more green screen is joined by slow bread slicing and weak ghost-monk makeup. We switch back to color film and join Jack and his little sister hiding out in the catacombs, attempting to figure a way out of their predicament. An old scroll that looks pretty damn fresh tells Jack how to send the monks back to Hell or maybe not… it was kind of muttered by our hero. The siblings find a crying girl in the church but I think it’s a different church than the one from the first part… or maybe that wasn’t a church at all. My head hurts. Part one and part two characters cross paths and it all leads to a drawn out bunch of nothing. This movie is a mess that has some cool locations but nothing else for fans of anything approaching competence. Luckily, I’ve never found competence all that necessary in my genre entertainment so I probably enjoyed this more than most. Don’t take that as a recommendation, it still sucks. It just sucks so hard that I’m a little impressed over how ill-prepared the people behind this were. Here’s a few pieces of knowledge you’ll walk away from this movie with.

- If you need holy water, throw a crucifix in a bowl of lake water.
- Any baseball bat becomes a weapon of God if you draw a lowercase “t” on it with a marker.
- Ghost monks love Renaissance Fair weapons
- Being run through with a sword doesn’t really hurt all that much
- Little sisters have no peripheral vision
- Some people shouldn’t be filmed sword fighting