College students find themselves roaming the halls of the long abandoned Copper Queen Community Hospital over night after picking the spot as the focus of their documentary. The place, like all hospitals in this type of outing, was host to disappearances and illegal experiments before the death of the head doctor closed the doors for good. He had it coming. He probably would have carried on with his vile work if not for his bastard son and former patient Isaac getting himself revenge. Issac reportedly was gunned down and laid to rest in a shallow grave but his ghost is said to still wander the building and ain’t all that fond of intruders. Well, Isaac ain’t dead exactly and now the youthful Hispanic kid has somehow transformed into a blade-armed hillbilly madman. The blade-arm and madness are intentional, poor casting explains the whole Mexico to Alabama transformation. Ethnicity matters little anyways because the college dopes are gonna start dropping and that’s why we signed up for this. Our lead actress reads the definition of “ghost” from Webster’s but she cites it as such so at least she’s not gonna run into copyright problems. Our hero Maya has a sassy goth friend and a shitty ex who she talks to on the phone in the opening… she also has a nightmare about the place that is really annoying because it looks like someone’s hazy memory of a Filipino Jacob’s Ladder knockoff… that’s her development. Maya, Angel (sassy goth friend), Mekalia (she has to pee a lot… that’s her character… always stopping to pee… we get a montage, not of her peeing but of her running off to pee or returning from peeing), Lucas (“lovable” goofball) and then some guy who looks like what Jim Carrey would look like if he was taken out of the oven too soon head out to film inside the supposedly haunted hospital. Bad comedy and slightly worse audio set the bar pretty low as we wait for the gaggle of dips to come into contact with the lunatic but they have to stop for conversations with locals to fill themselves in on the history of the place and deliver some more comedy that isn’t funny. It’s nearly forty minutes into the eighty minute film when they finally make it to the location, they’re stopped by some local who warns them against going in… he’s ignored and salty about it. He also calls Temu Jim Carrey a “candy ass” before telling everyone they’ll be dead by morning. This curmudgeon is definitely my favorite character. There’s ghosts, Maya’s backstory about her breakdown, banter, more rough audio, found footage stylings and more than a couple prime chances to go get some chores around your house done. Maya’s ex shows up because he is not happy about being ignored and attacks Maya when she tells him to fuck off. He pulls a knife and delivers a completely non-threatening speech before getting dragged into a hole in the wall and murdered by the psycho with a blade attached to his arm. Finally, something has happened at 55 minutes! The group in expectedly freaked and discount Jim Carrey decides to run off on his own because he thinks that increases his odds of survival… yeah, he’s not bright. This causes Angel to slip from annoying sassy gal to unbearable shrieking ass. Maya is a wreck and Lucas and that girl with the problem bladder go off to find a way out. It’s easy pickings from that point on. There’s a bunch wrong with this film from every angle of filmmaking but the homeless-lookin’ murder-hillbilly is a hoot and a pure blast whenever he’s on screen… that’s just nowhere near enough to justify even a cursory glance.
No comments:
Post a Comment