Review of The Deaths of Ian Stone (2008) by Ana G — 03 Feb 2010

This is another of the previous Horrorfest films and so far I've seen 3 others, two of which I didn't like and one of which I thought was 'ok'.

This little unique movie is about this guy that gets murdered by some weird shadow creature, then wakes up in a different life with no memory of his previous one only to get murdered by the shadow creature again, and repeat. Along the way he starts remembering things from his previous life and sets out to be a stop to whatever's going on.

In this day in age where almost every horror movie is a sequel or remake or inspired by another movie or so-called life event, its refreshing to get ones that are entirely original and an added bonus when they actually turn out decently good. And when the entire plot revolves around the same character dying over and over, that hardly leaves room for the movie to get dull and boring, so the runtime moves along at a good pace. I was never checking the time anyway to see how much was left to the movie. The special effects were also surprisingly good for a low-budget movie and the shadow creatures looked pretty damn good and creepy, and it was grounds for some pretty intense and suspenseful scenes.

Not all was cherries and roses though. The score was so generic I hardly even knew it was there most of the time. A strong score can really make or break a movie and in this one it almost broke it. And even though the idea of seeing someone get killed over and over is good in theory, it wasn't used to its full potential here at all. There was lots of room for inventive Final Destination-style deaths but all we really get is the main dude getting his throat slashed every single time and that got a bit stale after awhile.

Overall I enjoyed the movie and I'm not sorry I saw it, but it didn't reach its full potential and its probably nothing I'll ever be interested in seeing a second time.