I loved House of the Devil, Ti West's excellent homage to 70's grindhouse horror. I wasn't so enamoured of The Innkeepers but it was still a good film. Then we have The Scrament. I don't know, I really don't. What the fuck happened Ti? Did Eli Roth bully you into making this staggering piece of shit? Where do I start?
<spoiler alert>
Did West really think that we wouldn't make the connection to the real, and terrible, Jonestown massacre?
You remember how Kubrick turned parts of the Thames in the UK into Vietnam? Well, West must have paid Rent-a-Palm around £20 for the set dressing. You have these sad little banana palms scattered around looking really lonely.
Tension or lack of it. There is no sense of foreboding. None.
We don't care about any of the cult members as they are not given personalities apart from being brainwashed drones, and so when the mass suicide happens, it has absolutely no impact.
The cameras. Just how many cameras are there? I lost track of who had a camera and where it was.
A truly terrible film, exploitative in exactly the wrong way, that pisses on the memory of the people that died at Jonestown and on all their families and friends. Go watch House of the Devil and forget this was ever filmed.
The one star was for a very well created gun-in-mouth scene at the end.
Original letterboxd review
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