Post by slayrrr666 on Jun 13, 2006 10:48:57 GMT -5
“Boo” is one of the best ghost stories in recent times.
**SPOILERS**
On Halloween night, Jessie Holden, (Trish Coren) and her boyfriend Kevin, (Jilon Ghai) decide to visit a haunted hospital with their friends, couple Marie, (Nicole Rayburn) and Freddy, (Josh Holt) and Emmett, (Happy Mahaney) who’s already inside rigging it to be a haunted house for the group. When they arrive at the hospital, Kevin and Freddy claim Emmett had nothing to do with the set-up and continue to tour the hospital. They eventually stumble upon Allan, (Michael Samluk) who is also exploring the hospital for some missing kids a couple months previous. When they realize that something weird is going on in the third floor of the hospital, it becomes a race to solve the mystery of the hospital and get out alive.
The Good News: Wow, was this a great unexpected film. I had read the reviews about this before-hand, and had a general idea about this one, but I didn’t know it was going to be this good. To me, suspense is one of the key things in a horror that can turn a good film into a great one and a great one into a spectacular one. This one is one of those good ones turned great because of the suspense. Most of that is accomplished by the unbelievable location used as the hospital. The elaborate, long hallways and dim, dank walls are just the perfect setting for the scares to come fast and furious, and this does. So many scenes that are played along the hallways are creepy and slightly off-center enough to elicit a general feeling of unease. Any time there’s an elevator gag in here is prime material, as it easily gets the job done when the need for a creped out feeling is required. There is just plenty to write about requiring the elevator gags that it could take pages to write about the effectiveness of each one: the difference between them, the lighting, the editing, the angles, the location. All of it together is what makes them so fun and likable, yet so dreading and spooky. They steal the show every time and for good reason. This helps make the sporadic gore work. While not the goriest film ever made, the film does sport some nice splatter, including a really messy hand break, a face melted off, a series of dismembered corpses and a pretty nice impalement, among other great deaths. It’s one of the finest combinations of suspense and gore in the genre. The character of the detective assisting the guy into the hospital has one of the coolest back-stories in horror cinema, and shows a little creative. The film even has one pretty fast plot, and it gets interesting right away and keeps the mood for the rest of the film.
The Bad News: The ending third of the film really needs work. It doesn’t seem as strong as the rest of the movie is, and it ends really weakly. The set-ups are there, it had the proper direction to do it, but the ideas manifested are a little weak. This is perhaps the film’s only misfire, though.
The Final Verdict: With a little help on the ending, this could be one of the best horror films of recent times. As it stands, this is still a great one and will definitely creep you out. This is for those that really can’t stand the theatrical horror films or those that really love creepy settings with a little bit of gore to go along.
Rated R: Graphic Language, Graphic Violence and Brief Nudity
