The Lockdown Hauntings

I notoriously ALWAYS finish a movie. My wife even makes fun of me for it, calling it a waste of my time.

Well... I found my white whale. The first movie in literally decades I couldn't be bothered to finish. With just 12 minutes left, I couldn't justify the waste of time and braincell function to keep on watching this movie with a, honestly, interesting concept.

I forgive the actors. We all have to start somewhere, right? But the writing, pasing, cinematography and sound design... I just couldn't anymore.

I spend the 12 minutes doing something stimulating, by cleaning the vegetable drawer in my refrigerstor.

Sure, I sat down to watch the 2021 movie "The Lockdown Hauntings" because the movie had Tony Todd in it. Of course I did, after all he is an iconic horror actor after all. And yeah, I found the movie's title to be a bit dubious, but still I opted to sit down and watch "The Lockdown Hauntings".

But wow, this movie was bad. Terribly bad. The movie was fully and wholeheartedly devoid of anything even remotely resembling a proper storyline. And just what exactly went through the mind of the writer here, I cannot even begin to fathom. But wow, this movie was just rubbish.

So essentially this was about a serial killer returned from death to continue killing amidst the Covid-19 outbreak. Yeah, doesn't get any more corny than that.

The movie was nothing but repetitive scenes over and over. Sure, it was different women being terrorized by an unseen phantom assailant, but every singly scene was the same, and it was all just so pointless and bland to watch. That made for a very poor movie experience.

The characters in the movie were one-dimensional cardboard cut-outs milling about, trying to deliver some dubiously written dialogue and trying to bring repetitive scenes to life on the screen. It was fun for the first scene, then it just grew tiresome and annoying.

Director Howard J. Ford didn't really manage to deliver an entertaining movie here with "The Lockdown Hauntings". And for a horror movie, then I must say that this 2021 was a massive swing and a miss.

I can't recommend you waste your time, money or effort on a movie such as "The Lockdown Hauntings". It just simply isn't worth it. And some of us suffered through this ordeal so you don't have to. Trust me.

My rating of "The Lockdown Hauntings" lands on a two out of ten stars.

I feel bad that tony todd was in this. He deserves more and his character couldve been utilized in a better way. Its a very mismatched film as we have these different segments and I suppose being filmed during the pandemic didnt really help its chances, there are just random scenes of seeminly unrealated characters talking to loved ones and many scenes are pretty boring. There are some supernatural goings on but they feel cheap and dont really cause any realy haunted vibes. The killings seemed weird to. If you want a good film by director howard j ford id recommend dark game it has a much beter story.

As boring as lockdown was for all of us, this was pretty bad even by the standards of nothing to do for months on end. Pretty sure it was written, directed, and acted during lockdown to be silly, but meh.

DISCLOSURE: I'm a friend of a cast member, so I must recuse myself from giving a rating and instead, I'll submit a brief interpretation.

"Fear is something horrible, an atrocious sensation, a sort of decomposition of the soul," (Guy de Maupassant, 'Le Peur' 1882).

A bustling, vibrant metropolis, eerily, unnervingly quiet; these are the opening images that lead us into the surreal paranoid world of London and the UK under Lockdown. We are introduced to the characters who fear for loved ones, for their lives, for their uncertain futures. All they know is that they have no control or power over unseen and unforeseeable events.

Against this background, a serial killer has emerged, elusive in the extreme; not only are they no signs of break-ins, there are no forensic clues at all. To compound the mystery, the detective assigned to the case is herself under quarantine, waiting for test results to see if she is infected.

The unknown unseen killer could represent COVID and how easily it can be transmitted. We sense the alienation and impotence of the characters, lacking the support of friends, family and institutions. Everyone is alone and vulnerable and the deaths are the personification of extreme paranoia in extreme circumstances. We are not scared of what we know, but of what we don't know.

'The Lockdown Hauntings' is a valuable source for how people lived and felt in the early 2020s as even at time of writing, we don't know if the vaccines work (solve the case) or if new mutant variants will arise ...