Dead Room, The (2016)
Matt Boiselle
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Starring Jed Brophy, Jeffrey Thomas, Laura Peterson
Directed by Jason Stutter
With a beaten-down sub-genre such as the paranormal investigation field, it truly takes a lot to make my little neck hairs stand up on end – not sure if it’s the desensitizing of the whole scheme, or a lack of true scares that can be employed to make you feel uneasy. In any event, Jason Stutter’s angry-ghost flick, The Dead Room has hit multiple viewing platforms, and the question remains: “is it worth a watch?” Step inside the spooky old house and decide for yourself.
Following the after-effects of a New Zealand family forced to leave their home due to some ghostly nonsense going around the house, we pick up with a trio of investigators (Brophy, Thomas and Peterson) brought in to do a little spectre-sniffing, and their results yield some fairly unimpressive results. We’ve got the unscheduled banging of doors, objects being tossed around varying rooms, and the occasional shadowy figure that waits in the corner. Now I’m not going to take a large deuce on the fact that in real life, these instances may very well cause large bacon-strips to appear in the backs of your skivvies, but let’s face it – we’ve all seen this stuff to death on film, and for this cat, it simply doesn’t register anymore. Sorry, creative team – just telling you how it is. The usual gung-ho attitude of never wanting to stop filming is at hand for one investigator, while the other wants to pack up shop and head home when things get a bit greasy…sound familiar? Rent ANY OTHER ghost-hunting movie and make some notes.
I’m not really sure where to take the remainder of this review, simply due to the fact that I’ve written this same end-result a number of times regarding these types of films. The acting is mainlined, with no real stand-out performances, however I can appreciate the film’s scenery inside the blacked-out domicile – makes you wonder how the former family decided to stay there for so long, but in any fashion, it just fell flat. Was it the worst paranormal-findings flick I’ve ever seen? Not by a long shot – as a matter of fact, I’d probably put this above quite a few I’ve watched over the last year or so, but the staple here is that there’s nothing new to see right now. We need details, people! Shocking images, new ways to drum up scares, maybe an embargo upon the creation of these types of movies for a few years – ANYTHING to refresh the sub-genre. But in the meantime, I’ll just sit here and clutch my copies of The Amityville Horror and Poltergeist a little bit tighter.
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Film
Categorized:Reviews
