Hallow's End

A group of fraternity brothers and their girlfriends are holding a Haunted House to raise some money. Local farmer `Pumpkin Jack' wants to help out, and brings a box of props for them to use. Little do they know, the goodies he brought include a book of witch's chants and a cursed jack-lantern among other items. While everyone is setting up for the haunted evening, one girl gets busy reading passages aloud from the book, which in horror movies is usually not a good thing. As the evening progresses, one by one the guys and girls dressed up in scary outfits start to become the creatures they're dressed up as. Dracula turns into an actual vampire and tries to bite people's necks. The zombie becomes a zombie and wants to eat the brains of his friends, and a bitchy girl turns into a witchy woman. Very low budget, but it's releasing the week before Halloween, so it's probably going to make money on home video.

Let this be a perfect example of how a movie description and box art can be overly misleading!

HALLOW'S END is trite, predictable, pointless and offers NOTHING to its viewers. The pace of the film is enough to put anyone to sleep! Nothing really seems to happen in the film until the last 20 minutes or so. However, even at that point what does happen is so utterly ridiculous, making absolutely no sense whatsoever. There is no real build up, no back story to support the less than paper-thin plot.

In all honesty, this movie could have been a great direct-to-video flick, unfortunately they missed by a LOOOONG shot! Another reviewer mentioned this movie reminded them of the classic horror from the 80's...I question whether or not this individual has seen 80's horror flicks, as this movie pays no homage to them in any way!

Avoid this at all costs!!!! This flick doesn't even offer avid horror fans like myself some kind of guilty pleasure. I was left very dissatisfied and wanting my rental fee back!

0 out of 10

This feature, which looks like a mediocre student production, has a very intriguing idea for a horror story, that being a Halloween night in a frat haunted house tour where the players become the horror characters they are performing. However, the production values are so weak and sometimes so inept that the whole idea is ruined. The acting is what you'd expect from college students, generally mediocre and either too weak or over-the-top. Fortunately, I only spent $1 for this DVD, so in that respect it was okay, but it's really not worth much more than that. Just can't figure out why some folks rave about it and give it a 10. Do they have a stake in it somehow?

Wow...where to begin...picked this up at Big Lots for only $2.99. That's three bucks I'll never see again...ever...and for what? I'll tell ya. An hour and fifteen minutes of boring, boring, boring chat and college angst that seemed more suitable for a Lifetime movie than the horror flick advertised on the box. (May the marketing droids who designed it burn in Hell for all eternity). Follow that up with a little bit of cheap gore (not even good gore mind you...) and a plot twist at the end that comes out of nowhere, and makes no sense. Awful, awful, awful...

Was there any redeeming qualities? Well, on the Joe Bob Briggs scale, there WERE six breasts involved, but that's hardly worth my long lost three bucks. Without those, this coulda been on Sci-Fi at, say, two or three in the morning...

Bmoviefreak

Gosh, another great idea pummeled into the ground by inept film-making.

No one needs to recount the ways this fails. But what it has that's clever is worth talking about.

Horror isn't about horrible things so much. Its about frightening the audience, and the best way to do that is to engage the audience in the story. The most common way is to "fold" the audience into the story somehow.

And the easiest way to do THAT is to have the movie start out being a show and turn REAL.

That's what we have here: some dumb teenagers dress up as actors in a haunted house show. Then by some curse, they actually become their scary characters.

Could have worked if the filmmaker had a clue. By the way, when this is done deftly, it doesn't matter if the actors or effects are good. After all, it is only a show, right?

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.