Leofwine_draca
Another boring American horror story, this one filmed in a rambling old building somewhere in Maryland. It features a cast of has-been actors who spend almost the entire running time wandering around dimly-lit corridors while the scriptwriters attempt to make some kind of sense of a muddled and disjointed back story. Although there are a few attempts at intense scare scenes and ghostly stuff, there's no gore or real incident to speak of.Headlining the cast is Dina Meyer, formerly of STARSHIP TROOPERS fame and nowadays propping up many a B-movie. Joining her is controversial former porn actress Traci Lords whose acting is limited to say the least, Gabrielle Anwar (BODY SNATCHERS), and a bunch of middle aged guys. Needless to say the quality of the performances and the technical values are all sub-par, making this a rather pointless production.
loomis78-815-989034
Attending a funeral for a friend, six friends have a reunion. The deceased last request is for the group to open a time capsule they buried together 20 years ago. When they do this, they discover the corpse of a dead girl and before anyone can reflect or recall why the corpse is in there, they all leave. The angry spirit locks all of them in a decaying old hospital and makes them confront their roles in the dead girl's death. In the meantime they are getting picked off inside the decaying walls of the hospital. Well, sort of. That is if you can follow the story that jumps around in ways that aren't always clear. This is Crazy Eights biggest problem and at times is frustrating. Wrapped inside this frustrating story is a horror film with some solid scares and imagery, a good dose of atmosphere from the old building and a solid cast. Director uses the scary looking ghost just enough to keep the audience wondering what nasty deed she is going to do next. The movie has good pacing and never becomes dull although the blood his kept in check for most of it. Unfortunately there are just too many moments where the audience will be asking 'what is going on here'. The ending is also a head scratcher as well. It's too bad the narrative couldn't have been tighter but the movie still delivers enough creeps and scares to make it something to watch.
slayrrr666
"Crazy Eights" is a potentially good movie undermined by a lot of flaws.**SPOILERS**Following a friend's death, friends Jennifer Jones, (Dina Mayer) Father Lyle Dey, (George Newbern) Gina Conte, (Traci Lords) Beth Patterson, (Gabrielle Anwar) Brent Sykes, (Franky Whaley) and Wayne Morrison, (Dan DeLuca) who have known each other since childhood, gather together to go through the belongings left to them. Despite being initially apprehensive, they go out to an isolated cabin where everything is located and set about looking through the valuables, eventually discovering a strange facility located within. Trying to understand how everything fits together, they realize that all of them were involved in a top-secret project that had experimented on children, including them, and that someone is still there trying to get revenge on them, forcing them to race to find it's secret and stop it.The Good News: There wasn't a whole lot to like with this one. The fact that it starts off with a potentially-promising premise that sounds pretty cool and should-be fun to occur. It's quite unique, about the experimentations going on and it does have a ring of plausibility about it, one of those areas that could've happened in the past and really could've been done, making it all that much better. The fact that the locations on display, when we can see them, are pretty creepy is a plus. The giant bunker underground looks really creepy when we get to see it, being large, spacious and, in one of the highlight moments where we follow one of them who goes in circles trying to get out only to arrive back at the same spot, is inspired and ingenious, full of great shots and really makes for one of the creepiest times in the film. Another minor one, where the professor has the flickering images pop-up on the video-screen after the classroom lecture is really nice, considering it's unknown what's happening then and it doesn't take an eternity to get through like the others shortly after. The last good plus here is the fact that there's some nice deaths in here, when it gets around to knocking them off. One is impaled through the neck with a spear-on-the-wall, another is stabbed with a glass shard, one has their leg broken in a fall down stairs, one has a windowsill closed on their neck and another rips their eyes out, so this one has some gore. Otherwise, it's all that's good here.The Bad News: This one here can only be called a major disappointment, as there isn't too much good stuff here. One of the many problems is that there's hardly any real interest going on at the beginning of the film concerning what's going on. Despite the fact that they meet together to discuss the funeral, yet it's just so dull and lifeless that it hardly gets anything going. From an abundance of failed scares, such as whatever was happening to the sculptor as that scene lasted an eternity while she kept smoothing out a piece muttering to herself yet not once was there a clear revelation of what she was making or why that was a scary situation to be in, or the haunting of the priest in the rectory as he spent another eternity searching for something making noise off the distance, yet because of the way it's edited, it appears that he's looking for the source of the music playing over the scene. That the film then proceeds to spend close to ten minutes with them all talking to each other about the significance of it, with no resolution only to suddenly throw out an idea that no one made a trail to so that it seemed logical, and then even more wandering around in an area so dark it renders the hopeful-suspense moot before finally finding the underground bunker that leads to even more time wandering around. Half of the movie is literally devoted to wandering around the different locations spouting off the same thing about trying to find out why they're there and what it all means. This makes it incredibly difficult to get into the film and take anything about it in any way, shape or form seriously, meaning the whole thing is just deadly dull. Another big flaw here is the film's lack of explanation for what exactly happened at the bunker in the finale. The film just had a bunch of actions carried out, including some gruesome deaths, then just ended without really saying what happened. It makes no clues as to whether it was a ghost, one of them, or what, and the stopping suddenly without explanations tactic isn't comforting. The last flaw to this one is that, because of the amount of time spent elsewhere, most of the big revelations concerning the story occur at the very end. The reason for naming the group as such, what happened to them to get to know each other, what was happening to them, left unexplained until the last half-hour of the film, rendering them of their importance and making it seem as though the film had forgotten about them. It's not a good feeling to have, and these here are what's wrong with the film.The Final Verdict: This wasn't all-out bad, as there's a nice amount of potential on display, but fails mainly into the disappointment area. Really only seek this one out if you're a fan of the cast or feel the need to complete the series, otherwise those who know this isn't something for them are advised to ignore.Rated R: Graphic Language and Violence
bobwildhorror
Being named to the After Dark Horrorfest must be a mixed bag. On the one hand, your independent horror flick gets great distribution and promotion. On the other, it gets saddled with unrealistic expectations, the result of the festival's hype about releasing films that are too scary and subversive for Hollywood. I've yet to see one of these films that lived up to these inflated expectations. Most are just variations on a theme, with CRAZY EIGHTS proving no exception.This picture offers us a combination of THE BIG CHILL and CUBE (or any number of Twilight Zone episodes about people being stuck in strange environments). A group of childhood friends regroup after the death of one of their own and find themselves stuck in the basement of an abandoned research hospital. Of course, they share a horrific secret: they were all test subjects in a psychological experiment that went awry. They hallucinate. They scream and cry. And then they run off by themselves, character after character, so they can be conveniently picked off by an evil entity.CRAZY EIGHTS is competently directed. It features a great location (who can fault an abandoned, creepy hospital?). And the actors, including former porn star Tracy Lords, do a nice job.But I was again struck by what the film didn't have: any kind of plausible explanation about the spirit infestation. Instead, we get lame J-horror borrowings. *BIG SPOILER* All this carnage was due to the spirit of one angry little girl. It's an angry little girl we hardly ever glimpse, which is a good thing in a film like this, but it's still a lame excuse for 90 minutes of supposed "terror." It's as nonsensical as its big-budget cousin, SILENT HILL, which used the same premise.Don't get me wrong, this isn't a horrible movie. But neither is it a thinking person's horror film. I'm actually confused by who its target audience was. There's so little blood that it isn't pandering to gorehounds. CRAZY EIGHTS actually goes out of its way to hide the aftermath of the ghost attacks. And even if it did want to linger on the carnage, the effect would have been nullified by the muted color palette of the film. The entire picture looks like it was de-saturated. It's an odd and pointless approach…a perfect compliment to the plot.
