00:00Lynn Shay's movie director isn't just making a horror film, she ends up in the middle of one, getting scared
00:05to death.
00:06Olivier Paris is a beleaguered production assistant to cantankerous film director Lynn Shay,
00:11who is preparing to make a horror film with genre icon Kurt Dimer.
00:14Paris finds an abandoned orphanage she uses at a location where five orphans were found scared to death
00:20and suggests psychic Bill Moseley perform a seance for the cast and crew, which awakens the property's violent past.
00:27Written and directed by Paul Boyd, scared to death is one of those movies that feels like it's almost but
00:32not quite something
00:33in that it has the right concepts and all the ingredients for a fun horror comedy, but never finds the
00:39right energy.
00:40Scared to death obviously isn't taking itself too seriously and is purposefully goofy and tropey.
00:45It clearly wants to be a comedy, as you can tell by the broad cast of characters, which includes Jade
00:49Chinoff as a stoner crew member,
00:51B.J. Minor is a gay actor who's meant to be the love interest to Victoria Connifold's coke addict starlet,
00:57and musician Kurt Dimer playing some sort of horror legend who calls himself The Grog.
01:02The problem is that it seems like the script has forgotten to write any actual jokes or have any funny
01:06reactions to the situation,
01:07so laughs are very thin on the ground, nor is it molly in the meta angle of them being filmmakers
01:12who are aware of the genre's tropes while being in the middle of it.
01:15So it just feels like a standard horror film that just happens to have a lot of silly protagonists in
01:19it.
01:20That leaves it as a horror comedy that ultimately commits to not being much of either.
01:24It's not nearly amusing enough, and it certainly doesn't have the atmosphere to be scary aside from some jump scares,
01:30and that's death to something like this.
01:33Luckily, the more experienced members of the cast try to save it by just hamming it up.
01:37Lin Shay's viciously abusive director has some nicely acidic put-downs, even if she's sidelined in the second half after
01:43she becomes possessed,
01:44while Bill Moseley plays against type as a mild-mannered real estate manager who moonlights as a shady medium who
01:50gets in way over his head.
01:52Ray Dawn Chong also turns up as the film's producer, who's prominently introduced and then sits out the entire rest
01:58of the flick,
01:59so why are they even in the movie?
02:01Especially since it takes half the running time to set everything up and get properly started.
02:06Scared to Death is too slow and lumbering for what should be a madcap haunted house send-up.
02:11Also, Paris' PA is a very uninteresting main character who spends most of the film recording the seance for BTS
02:17footage,
02:18and rivals found footage characters for his inability to put down the camera even when people are dying,
02:24which isn't even play as a joke.
02:26Also, during the end credits, we get a bunch of AI-generated fake posters for the Grog's supposed filmography,
02:32which ruins what could have been a bit of fun.
02:34I'm not a ghost, but BOOOOOO!
02:37BOOOOOO!
Comments