Criaturas ocultas

The scientist Susan Carter (Dawn Ford) is researching the rehabilitation of addicts using an experimental drug in her rehab center. After her death, her idle son Brian Carter (Sean Clement) is forced by his friend Simon (Jason Blicker) to travel to the real state that he had inherited.

Brian and Simon travel with five other friends to the spot and they find that the center is actually an ancient monastery and they have to spend the night. Sooner they are murdered, one by one, by creepy creatures that live in the place.

"Hidden 3D" is a horror movie that can be described in only one adjective: awful! The screenplay is ridiculous without any development of characters. The situation itself of a remote monastery of the Seventeenth Century uses as a rehab center is unlikely. The group intends to spend the night in an abandoned place but does not bring any facility (meal, tent, backpack, sheets, towels etc.), only themselves to be slaughtered along the night. My vote is two.

Title (Brazil): "Filhos da Escuridão" ("Sons of the Darkness")

Friends of a lost son convince him to visit the derelict institution he inherited from his mad scientist mother. But something supernatural awaits them in an underground labyrinth.

Best thing about this is the cinematography, with some gorgeous lighting and angles, and the editing is fairly tight. There's regular CGI, which isn't impressive. The director does an OK job, but the jump scenes are pretty lax, and the first death has a door that closes firmly rather than with a furious slam.

Two big problems. The script is lame, giving no clear reason why this group is together and delivering dull dialogue. The actors do well with what they're given, and nobody falls on their face - but it relies too much on medical gobbledegook and an over-elaborate reveal. I see IMDb lists the writers as Alan Smithy and Alana Smithy.

Second problem is the music never lets up, like in a '50s melodrama where you're told what to feel. Less is more, and silence is horror gold.

Overall, it looks pretty good but the story collapses into Scooby Doo banality. A mixed watch, so 4/10.

Stupid. Bad acting, very weak script. Good camera.

I was once tempted to get HIDDEN 3D on Blu-ray in order to experience the 3D excitement for myself. Something held me back, so when I saw it coming up on the Horror Channel schedules I decided to check out the 2D version instead.

Thank God I didn't waste money on the Blu, because HIDDEN 3D is a really bad film. It's no different from another trillion Z-grade movies besides, featuring as it does a band of bland, uninteresting teenagers wandering around a creepy old building and finding themselves assailed by some of the lamest CGI-faced spooks imaginable. It doesn't even have the found footage novelty of a GRAVE ENCOUNTERS going for it; this is pure bad.

It goes without saying that the acting is of the usual quality for this genre, i.e. very poor. One female wears a push-up bra in order to drag in male viewers but the effect is hardly uplifting. The CGI spooks are dull in the extreme, the script is barely noticeable, the twist ending anything but. Why a swarm of CGI bees keeps flying about the house I don't know, because scientifically this is preposterous, and even by movie logic it's complete nonsense. No, even a 3D version of this film would be just as bad; one to avoid at all costs.

After inheriting a decrepit hospital from his mother, a man and his friends decide to investigate the area only to find it inhabited by the ghosts of her former patients and must try to get out alive.

This is a decidedly decent enough offering that does manage to overcome it's few problems. One of the biggest issues is the fact that there's never any getting around the fact that it's all-too-familiar and plays out quite much like the dozen other films that employ similar elements. The dark family secret, the isolated house, the group of friends visiting that are going to decide what to do with the rest of the property, it all feels too similar and reminds of other films quite readily, often-times making it seem like this one isn't necessarily all that important to get through. This is certainly compounded by the fact that the film's central plot comes undone by a character's speech to one of the victims whereupon the whole plot becomes unraveled and renders the entire film a moot point by doing so, forcing itself to correct this with an incredibly lame and convoluted excuse to try to save face when it really doesn't have any other choice here. That is certainly one of the biggest flaws a film can have, where a character ends up revealing a crucial plot-point that effectively renders the purpose of the entire film null and void, and it's not all that often a film can overcome that. Luckily, it does try with a truly wonderful and wholly creepy setting here that really does effectively capture the decrepit hospital look quite well with the dark, endless corridors, secret underground tunnels and blocked-off passages which give off a really unnerving feeling that entering it isn't the wisest decision in the world. That makes the ghost attacks quite chilling when they occur, with plenty of leaping out from behind doorways and walls, standing behind them unseen, blocking off escape routes or tackling someone and dragging them off-camera among others found here, so this tends to accentuate the creepy feeling of the building quite well. This also happens to give it a much bigger sense of action in the latter half so it seems quite thrilling at the right moments with he build-up to the finale, weak as it might be, but it does do enough to make it watchable if not extraordinary.

Rated R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.