Director: Justin Price
Writer: Justin Price (Screenplay)
Starring: Lisa May, Khu, Melissa L Vega, Victoria Valdez, David E Cazares, Deanna Grace Congo
Plot: When a female refugee discovers an ancient demonic device that opens the gateway to another realm, she unleashes a dark entity that poses as her daughter. After many failed attempts to have the church explain the creation of her worst nightmares, she learns that the house is cursed by an enraged spirit that died on Friday the 13th. And now a group of thrill seeking friends unknowingly unleash its wrath and damn their souls.
Runtime: 1 Hour 35 Minutes
There may be spoilers the rest of the review
Verdict: Standard Low Budget Horror
Story: The 13th Friday starts as we learn the legend behind a church where the daughter of a previous owner sacrificed here demonic daughter, but the house was waiting for more victims and the party of teenagers offers them that with the victims all disappearing.
Allison (May) has been preparing with her friends for what is meant to be the thirteenth sacrifice, while junior reporter Paige (Khu) is searching for answers to the disappearances going on around the house, can the answers be found before it is too late.
Thoughts on The 13th Friday
Characters – Allison becomes friends with the group that entered the house, she wants to learn more about what has been happening with the house but her friendship with the group might be to help solve the curse. Paige is a junior reporter that is investigating the string of disappearances in the town, but we don’t see that much from this character. Ryn is one of the friends who entered the house and must find a sacrifice to save herself and the friends. We get the usual group of friends, the person that has spent years investigate the first cast there and the easy victims.
Performances – When you look into the performances here, it would be fair to say these are not going to be remembered on any of the stars highlight reel, the performances just seem to fail to connect with what the horror is offering up.
Story – The story is an idea which sounds very interesting, because watching friends look to solve a curse which is coming for them with people from outside the group investigating the truth works. The problem I found is the way this story is told, we follow to separate people trying to solve the curse while also seeing the original group of friends not doing anything to investigate it themselves and if the story was told in a smoother way we would get a more complete horror movie.
Horror/Thriller – Many of the scares do feel borrowed from other horror ideas (The Ring, Lights Out just to mention a couple), but I did think the image of the ghost does come off frightening every time we see it.
Settings – The house or church starts the horror but then we fall into small town America and here the people don’t seem to know each other either and don’t seem to have one location where you would find them all.
Special Effects – The CGI effects do show us the budget the film was working with but the practical ones, well they are good with the make effects on the ghost.
Scene of the Movie – Lights Out
That Moment That Annoyed Me – Having two characters doing the same thing.
Final Thoughts – This is a horror film with a lot of potential but due to a poor storytelling process, we lose out on better developed characters, horror moments and most importantly any reason to care about these characters.
Overall: A horror that misses the marks
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