Fresh Hell

The movie is set at the height of the COVID lockdowns, so we are introduced to the main players via ZOOM. There are to be eight, diverse, and all have a common connection. This seems an easy way to get a movie made with the restrictions of COVID but will not age well, as the references are too current to survive for long. Grace starts, and each in turn slowly logs on. As they wait for Laura, she doesn't appear but a stranger appears, and does some very bloody things that upset others in the group. And then, others in the group seem to be killed off one by one, or did they? Because messages are received from the supposed murdered persons after they were supposedly dead. The movie is done in three acts. Three insufferable acts that really try the patience of the viewer. I would give high marks for incoherence, but that is really not one wants a movie to be. People appear in dog masks, but there is no explanation of what that is about. Is it a cult or hallucinations? The concept of the movie is interesting, but it fails miserably.

I watched this recently and enjoyed it. There have been quite a lot (too many) Zoom horror flicks born out of the pandemic by crafty filmmakers probably stuck indoors and 'hey let's make a film' but this one was stood out because the acting was good, the dialogue was witty, and the overall story was something I could get into and didn't feel forced.

It had twists and turns and I dug the whole metaphor for the Pandemic thing. It is a micro budget film for sure so I'm not going to judge it against The Shining (which is the ultimate shelter in place film if you think about it). A pretty solid 8.

Overall, this wasn't a bad movie. It was an interesting concept and did a fairly decent of capturing the feel of the COVID lockdown period. The scene where the villain Zoom-bombs the protagonists' online party was both funny and creepy.

The acting was a bit uneven. Some of the characters were pretty well done, but others were really bad. The villain in particular ruined it for me. Apparently, he was going for an "over the top" psycho and used Jim Carrey as his model. I just couldn't get passed the fact that he just seemed to be doing a really bad Jim Carrey impression. I kept waiting for him to bust out some lines from Ace Ventura or The Cable Guy.

Man did this movie crawl right under my skin. Lots of great ideas and a delightfully sadistic performance by Ryan Imhoff. That guys is completely twisted!

I felt really badly knowing that someone put a lot of work into this project. I felt as if they thought they were witty when crafting the dialogue. The acting was like a film class. The emotions were not realistic. The last set was nice. I genuinely didn't like the stranger. I suppose I wasn't supposed to like him so that can be considered a win. It was just written over the top from start to finish. It wasn't a slow build. The mystery of it wasn't engaging. I have seen a few other zoom split screen movies. I understand the low budget convenience. The others weren't good either. I am certain it could be done well. The others I saw were also elimination murders.