South of Hell

It's fairly rare I anticipate a film or a series that perfectly fails in all areas. You gather together a recognizable producer (Jason Blum), director (Eli Roth) and lead star (Mena Suvari) solely on a WEtv budget and you get something no one cared about creating. The shame in this is that the plot device has a fairly decent idea; A possessed woman that uses her inner demon powers to hunt, destroy/exorcise other demons. Sure it's basically recycled material, but I had assumed the South Carolina backdrop would have added a nice touch.

"CHEAP" is the easiest word for this series. It feels cheap right out of the gate with the poor editing cuts, bland voice-over and unremarkable dialogue. You present a southern dialect and yet there isn't a single success in faking the easiest accent in the US. I've heard Northerners confuse southern pronunciations with one another; South Carolina & a thick Cajun Louisiana are distinct to the common ear, but Mena Suvari refused any attempt at authenticity. Her character sounds like she's from Rhode Island. That's just lazy.

You could hope that the series would be another "so bad it's good" premise. Maybe inject a little humor into this hopeless flush down the genre toilet, but the whole series was dumped out all-at-once on Black Friday. It forced me to consider, "WEtv must have wanted to get rid of this as quickly as possible." ... as no second season is expected.

Watching the show brought me south to hell for sure ...

I forced myself through episode 1, which was hard enough.

The introduction was without love and very clumsy, not giving room for charakter development. It just felt like the intro of a cheap 90s series. Like a cheap combination of Buffy and Supernatural.

After episode 2 i stopped trying to give the show a chance.

The actors can surely do better, but with scripts like this there is not much room.

In summary: Poorly written show with poor special effects, cheaply produced. The cast that has potential, that's the only reason why i give 3 stars instead of 1.

And not in a good way ... which I guess when we're speaking of Hell would be a good thing ... but it isn't really. And it is a shame. Because while again someone prematurely rated and reviewed this "claiming this had potential" (at least partly true - the quoted statement), this really never was as engaging as it might have gotten.

Maybe it is because the formula is known. It does remind of other shows, like Buffy or anything similar you may have experienced already. Now of course that does not mean, the show has no right to exist. Copying something good but putting a twist to it or just making it accessible ... that is all we need. And while this isn't bad, it also never takes off either. Add to that an ending to the show that cries for it to be continued ... but as we know it got canceled ... so even if you liked this way better than I did (and I enjoyed parts of this), the ending will be frustrating to say the least

Tedious Melodrama with some demonic serving on top. It has the back and fort circular tragic nonsense copy pasted from the pulp series Supernatural. Except it tries to be the dark and profound version of that forgettable pleasure, forgoing any humour or light pop corn moments the series might have had.

No monsters, no lore: a single multi layered tragedy that doesn't captivate.

It tries to be a dark and sinister crawl, gives up on that around episode 4 and then bashes your brain pan in with repetitive junk.

You'd best skip this one.

I was a bit excited to hear of this. It could be a nice addition to all the horror and fantasy I usually watch.

I hate to say that it is dead inside. Bad grime and cheap fun lenses. The special effects are horrible. I read that somebody said that they just need a bigger budget, but I'm afraid that that's not it. You can build more suspense with less budget. What I saw was cheesy and bad choices in grime.

Even if they can look better with more budget, they have to work on the chemistry between the actors. There was none. They were saying lines and not reacting to one and other. The storyline.. was there a storyline? I got the feeling they all just sat around for thing to just happen.

I'm not recommending this show to anyone, unless you like cheesy hallmark series and like to be naughty for once, and not be damaged inside.