The Crying Dead

THE CRYING DEAD AKA THE WHISPERING DEAD documents members of a crew for a new paranormal reality show breaking into and staying overnight at an abandoned hospital, where they encounter more than they bargained for.

This found footage movie was released the same year as GRAVE ENCOUNTERS (2011), a thematically virtually identical but far superior found footage movie which demonstrates how much potential was unrealized here.

The prologue shows old footage of some kind of experiment but then nothing later in the movie ties into it. The actual ghosts are not given the prologue treatment. Also, there is a tale of cannibals and of a patient who cut his nurse that go nowhere. The crew members just disappear and we never know what exactly happens to them. The motivations of the supernatural beings are entirely unclear, which is surprising, given how much time the movie spends recounting the history of the hospital. In short, this is one of the more disjointed found footage movies I have seen.

Everything is predictable from a mile away, save for one mild twist: when the first supernatural events occur, the crew members still think that it is prank played on them; and the motivation for thinking so is actually plausible. Actually, the order in which the team members are picked off one by one was also something I did not predict, but the end result was all the same. There are no really new ideas here.

Finally, the way the ghosts are introduced and used for horror is pretty bad. It is really obvious that the ghosts are just a special effect, and for a moment I thought this was actually meant to be a plot twist in which someone sets up hokey ghosts to scare the crew or something.

Some of the scenes had the potential to be scary, but the victims are dispatched far too soon to unsettle the audience, and then, as mentioned, we never find out what precisely happens to them.

Finally, I don't understand why so many found footage movies make their characters so unlikable. I understand that for dramatic purposes, it is good to have characters with tragic flaws, but we the audience still have to be able to look beyond that to care for them.

I did not rate this lower because, despite the disjointedness, the story itself was fairly coherent and the movie had at least some atmosphere.

Overall, I consider this a below average found footage film. Some more recent and better found footage treatments of the same concept are HOLLOWS GROVE (2014) and GONJIAM: HAUNTED ASYLUM (2018).

I've been waiting to see this movie for over a year now. Since it was stilled called The Whispering Dead.

Was a nice surprise. They definitely went outside the normal ff box. It was a great mixture of horror, and comedy.

The characters were very likable, It was scary as hell at some points, and very funny in others.

It was great seeing quality acting in one of these films for a change.

It wasn't anything like Grave Encounters or PA. I'm OK with that.

Haven't seen that done before. Really worked.

All around great acting, action, and a worthwhile story.

So I started watching this for the first time this morning. I have to just say right off the bat, anyone who is familiar with the former Linda Vista hospital in Los Angeles then you would immediately recognize the shots outside of the hospital, it's a very iconic building. The same year this movie came out is when AMCAL Multi-Housing Inc. bought the building and renovated it into apartments. That is one of a few reasons why that scene was filmed out back of the hospital, since in this movie the hospital goes by a different name. I kinda giggled when Chris' character said it was "in a remote region of the northern California wilderness".

Yeah The Crying Dead was OK, but I wish someone would really kill (no pun intended) it with a ghost investigation movie.

When the trailer came out about two years ago, A lot people were compared it to Grave Encounter.

I was not big fan of Graven Encounter but that movie is a masterpieces to compared to The Crying dead (2011)

The dead won't be the only ones crying after this movie, as you be crying for wasting time on this rubbish.

The open scenes was really weired and the only decent part of the movie, Before title come up, we see fast forward scene from later in the movie.

Then get a bunch of people auditioning for new Ghost hunting show.

65% of nothing happing in this movie, boring plot very unlikeable people, who could not act, or actors pretending to be as Bad actors as they could .

There was not one second of a eerie feeling in this movie even WHEN the ghost showed up, effect were really badly done.

Then if the ghost don't show up, these people end up getting blown or drag away, that was so many time in less then a few minutes is gets tedious and boring, dose not scarce anyone.

2 out of 10

I just had to review this movie. I was one of those foot footage, stuck in an old haunted hospital, fans who has been waiting forever to see this. I waited while grave encounters comes and goes. Then grave encounters 2, then several movies just like GE, even one directed by Oliver Stones son. In my opinion GE is and probably always will be #1 on the list.

Now back to back to this mess of a movie. The editing is bad, the acting for the most part is bad and the story is very rushed and doesn't allow you to connect with anyone. Most of these movies will either start out slow others start out with a bang but in most cases will move in some kind of direction and allow you to somewhat connect with an actor or actress. This one however is all over the place. OK, we are led to believe they are shooting a pilot or sample for a TV series, but it just doesn't seem realistic. It just comes across and a bunch of kids with too much time on their hands wondering around an abandoned building with camcorders. To top that off it may have a jump or 2 but overall its not very scary at all. The CG was amateurish and unnecessary and the main "ghosts" of the movie were really not scary.

All in all 2 thumbs down and for the amount of time they had to re-do it they could have done a lot better!

SAD SO SAD!