★★-Pretty much completely takes place in the same room. Could have been a play , really. Don't see many high schools putting it on though, if you know what I mean.
Something I always pay attention to is the difference between the Critic Score and the Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes. This is one of those major discrepancy movies. Critics Score: 89%; Audience Score: 56%. For horror, it often means its good but insanely fucked up. Almost always means that the movie isn't fun. This was indeed disturbing, and it was indeed not fun.
Movie takes place on the night of Friday, December 27, 1945. Gist is five World War II veterans gather in the parlor of a Brooklyn brownstone owned by one Lt. Col. Clive Hockstatter who just lost his wife Suzy to suicide. They decide to have themselves a nice little post-Christmas séance to conjure up the vengeful spirit of the dead wife. Sounds like my kind of party.
After the host makes contact with his wife, he blows his brains out in front of everyone. Just before he eliminates his map, he says “before you leave, you have to do something for me,” or something like that .Soon after, a German woman tumbles out of the closet. Turns out, Suzy, the dead wife, suspected this lady was a Nazi spy. “Hock” now won't let anyone leave until she's dead.
I suspected the parlor was a personal Hell or something. Can't leave the room, possibly supernaturally stuck their with their demons with a potential real demon or ghost on the loose. Even say, “this is Hell, this room, and none of us are leaving until this Kraut is dead.” Everyone just does what they have to to survive and get out. That's the message of this one. Great. Just what I needed at this juncture.
Director, for his part, one Ted Geoghegan, also did the horror flicks We Are Still Here and Mohawk. Everyone in the movie is recognizable but not famous. See them pop up a lot in these Shudder movies, like this guy Larry Fessenden, who plays the guy who kills himself. He was also in Summoners, Offseason, Dashcam, Jakob's Wife, The Ranger, The Dead Don't Die, You're Next, and The Innkeepers. Dude does pretty much exclusively this type of horror. Others in the movie are Anne Ramsay who I recognize solely from A League of Their Own, Kristina Klebe who was one of the murdered girls in Rob Zombie's Halloween, and Jeremy Holm, who was the ranger in the horror flick The Ranger.The other two are Ezra Buzzington and Ron E. Rains who are familiar but unplaceable.
All the characters are terrible and unlikeable, which is kind of the point. For example, one guy calls his “friend” a “faggot” and then tells everyone the guy was a “baby butcher.” Dude killed children, so, you know, he's a monster. The accused Nazi woman consoles him though, so it's fine. “You're not a bad man for following orders.” Yeah, she seems totally innocent. The Greatest Generation my ass. Also known as the “Me Generation,” they gave birth to the Boomers, a run that fucked up the country.
Watch a lot of turds on Shudder, but occasionally I get one that is stellar. This was fine, I guess. But I wouldn't recommend it.
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