Review of Crazy Eights (2006) by Kristy O — 02 Dec 2007

This movie has a lot of promise: scary location, plenty of people to kill off in violent ways, horrific looking villian (from what you see), and various other elements that would make for a good horror movie.

Unfortunately, this movies suffers from having to try and explain too much in too little time. The beginning takes it time and sets up the story well enough, but once the scary shit starts to hit the fan the story falls apart. Back stories with the characters are usually quickly told in passing or completely ignored. (You know it's bad when characters who had forgotten their memories start to randomly come up with explanations just to move the story along.) Because of the poorly developed characters and back story we are left with a villain (the ghost of a dead girl) that never really gets properly developed. Oh sure, you learn why she is angry with the group, but the deaths come of as utterly pointless when people randomly die w/o understanding what it is that they have done to deserve such a fate (such as with the death of the first character). Even worse, we never actually see the full view of the dead girl, which is always a treat at the end of the movie for the audience.

Then there is the ending. After their half-assed and poorly thought out idea for survival fails miserably the lone survivor is left asking what the ghost wants from her... and so is the audience. Not only that, but the director throws in an ending meant to add some sort of philosophical twist to the movie that just leave the audience puzzled.

I honestly believe that with a bigger budget and a longer running time (even just 20 minutes) and this movie could have been great! Instead we only get a glimmer of how great this movie could have been.

BTW, how many people suffer compound fractures by falling down three steps? :P I know that I wasn't the only person in the theater to chuckle at this point.