Tuesday, April 16, 2013

The Dead of Night (2004)

Mental patient Gerald kills some staff, breaks out of the asylum, and ends up hiding in a local cemetery.  Meanwhile at the high school, the popular kids are beating up on geeky Carl until new kid Mel forcibly removes jock Darryl's fist from Carl's face. The arrival of the principal breaks up the fight between Mel and Darryl.

Inexplicably Darryl apologizes and invites the geeks and Mel to the gang's party that night at the cemetery.  Carl is psyched to be included while his friend Howard is more skeptical.  Note to geeks:  Never accept an invitation to party with the popular kids, especially when your last interaction was them telling you what a geek you are and beating you up.  Don't you know it's always going to end up with some horrible prank at your expense?

When Carl and Howard show up at the party, they are tied up and dumped into a grave. Hey geeks, it's all in good fun. We're just hazing you so you can join our cool kid group.

But what no one knows is that there are strange creatures in the cemetery. What are they? What do they want?  Where did they come from? What does Gerald have to do with them? You'll never know.

Once characters are turned into creatures, all they do is slowly walk in tandem through the school. Oooh isn't that scary, kids? Oh and the monsters wear rubber masks which move as they talk, but not in a good way.  The mouths don't move but the masks do from the movement of the actors chins while speaking. Plus the monsters speak with an effect on their voices which makes their dialogue incomprehensible much of the time.  When you can understand it, lulls you into a sleepy state.
Note to movie makers: when your cast looks like this...
... make sure your stock footage of high
school students is from a caucasian school
Just your typical high school student. He's not a day over 18.
This is what we have to fear from these creatures
The rubber creature masks.

No comments: