
Scared To Death, this is not William Malone’s 1980 creature feature, is the newest film in a popular trend of horror movies about the making of horror films. This can be seen in works such as House of Seven Corpses, A Cat in the Brain, Darkness Reigns, and One Cut of the Dead. It is a sub-genre of horror cinema that seems to be gaining more traction with each passing day.
Jasper (Olivier Paris, The Wrong Teacher, The Wrong Mr. Right) is a production assistant on the film Dead House, basically a glorified intern in the world of filmmaking. But he, like a lot of PAs, is fueled with ambition, and at this point meets himself at the site of a possible shooting, The Stern Orphanage which has been shut for the last seventy years after five children were found literally scared to death. It is the perfect location to film a horror movie as per Champ (Jade Chynoweth, The Last Ship, Max Winslow, And The House of Secrets).
When Felix (Bill Moseley, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Part 2) the real estate agent who shows the protagonist around the house, mentions that he performs seances and, in case he gets to meet Dead House’s star Michael, The Grog (Kurt Deimer, Trading Paint, Halloween) would do one for a reasonable price, Jasper gets an idea: all he has to do if he sells the movie’s director, Max (Lin Shaye, Insidious: The Red Door), but don’t ever call her Maxine. He can’t in fact, but when one of the stars, Lena (Victoria Konefal, Days of Our Lives, Circus Kane), who plays one of the characters in the picture, expresses a desire to take part in a seance in order to help her get into character, Max is more than pleased in relieving Jasper of his idea.
Writer and director Paul Boyd (I, Challenger, We Are Gathered Here Today) intertwines two successfully harvested storylines and wisely avoids treating them with absolute temperance. That’s not to say Scared to Death is a spoof either, it isn’t. But it certainly has the courage to take aim at various horror film cliches, like the ‘fake’ scene which actually does involve speaking to the dead, for instance, while it attempts to terrify its audience.
Before they all converge at the séance, Scared to Death can be summarized as a dramedy, which, like any other, has a large number of unattractive cast and crew. Those who are very keen may be able to tell that Rae Dawn Chong (Tales From The Darkside: The Movie, Commando) appears very briefly as Ruth, Dead House’s producer. From that point onward, however, the narrative concentrates on what happens inside the house and how they are quickly unable to escape it, let alone escape it with their lives.
After that there are also zombies, zombie children, and zombie dolls and, of course, there’s always the animatics rendered by the Legacy FX team who had previously taken part in 2012, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves and, as heard recently, Alien: Romulus. Again, there is the vexing question of, how within the budget they got to these gurus, but it was worth it. While this film is full of graphics, this film although low on graphics is quite effective. Together with the camera work of Steven Poster (Donnie Darko, Strange Brew), it is able to provide an appearance that transcends the budget.
To sum up, Scared to Death is an entertaining way to waste an hour and a half of your free time, and it’s worth waiting for the end credits in order to see the posters for the Grog’s numerous movies. While not particularly innovative, and one probably will not think of it in the next six months, it will be great for a Saturday night view with friends and beer.
This year Scared to Death will have its world premiere at the Popcorn Frights Film Festival and then it will start screening other films. If you can see it at one of those screenings, then do it, this is the type of cinema that is best watched with a decent crowd.
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