155 - A Brush With Death

    Five girls go away for a weekend, and run afoul of a few characters, and cross paths with a peculiar killer.
    Netflix had a description for this;
    "In this chilling tale, a group of cheerleaders spends the night in a deserted farmhouse haunted by a dead boy who killed his brother decades earlier."
    After finishing this movie, I realized that this description is at best, misleading, and at worst, completely wrong.
    1.  We don't know if they're cheerleaders.  I don't think there's any reason to suspect that they are.
    2.  They don't spend the night in a deserted farmhouse.  They spend the night in a mansion, fully furnished, with all utilities.
    3.  The farmhouse (which does exist) is not haunted by a dead boy who killed his brother.

    I suspect that this last point may have been my mistake.  The sound on this movie is pretty weak, so there were sequences earlier that I had a hard time following.
    Ignoring the weaknesses with that description, I still have some impressions of the movie.  First, it's pretty low budget.  I've seen a few horror movies of this caliber, and they're really an acquired taste.  Even though I don't mind them, I don't think I could just watch them back to back.  The budget only manifests itself in the quality of the effects, the quality of the film stock, and so forth.  What really needed more work was the sound quality.  Early on, there's a scene where the girls are riding in a jeep, talking.  We can hear the wind, and it's clearly not intentional.  I actually do credit them though - they did a lot of work to reduce the noise during that sequence.
    The best thing that the movie has going for it is that the girls are actually pretty attractive.  Normally I don't notice this anymore, but most of them were very cute.  The only one that really stood out was Lily Vu.
    The story has some really annoying problems though.  There's a lengthy flashback sequence early in the movie that we think is important, but by the time the end comes around, I'm pretty sure it didn't have anything to do with the story.  A major character, and a very important one, is introduced at the end, and his existence just serves to confuse the audience.  While I understood it, and I appreciate the twist, it could have been handled in a way that doesn't make the audience feel like they missed something important.
    I can't recommend this, but if you don't mind passive horror entertainment, it's not bad.
    Oh, and the paintings.  I'm very impressed with the ones that filled in the negative space.  Nicely done!