Plot
In 1988, Bailey, Quinn, Keith, and Mac, a group of young students, choose to visit an old villa in the countryside to complete a school research project. Little do they realize that hidden within the mansion lies an ancient demonic text.
Cast
Creator Mattia Sarao's debut as a director and writer. The cast, really shockingly poor.
Verdict
I don't know why but I was quite excited for Book of the Dead, I mean yes the name is a bit generic but I liked the retro art style and a couple of screenshots I'd seen made me hopeful. I really really need to stop doing that? You know, having hope and expectations.
The plot is basically Evil Dead, no I mean seriously it's Evil Dead. Folks go to secluded place, find the Necronomicon, deal with possession and demons etc. It even rips off a classic scene from Army of Darkness (1992) and not in a brief homage way either.
So we have death and demons, so how in the blue hell is the movie so alarmingly boring. I found myself fighting back the urge to close my eyes and drift into something better, counting sheep would have been more entertaining so perhaps I shouldn't have fought it.
It's no exaggeration to say that very little really happens here, I'd hit the halfway mark and I realized that so far it was nothing more than poor character development, exposition of a non-existent plot and literally nothing else.
Book of the Dead is the creation of someone with no originality so they just rehashed (And blatantly ripped off) better films and by someone with zero talent behind the camera as a horror movie featuring this kind of content shouldn't be boring!
Rants
You know what this reminded me of? The internet series Horrorverse (2023) which was an attempt at a cinematic universe made up of short films and movies that brought together multiple horror universes and characters such as Halloween, Hellraiser, Friday 13th, Escape from New York, Marvel, Evil Dead and more and was truly unconditionally abysmal. It was an attempt at being a love letter to horror fans but wound up being an embarrassing slap in their collective faces. Book of the Dead is the same, it tries to pay homage to Evil Dead but does it so badly it's rather insulting to the fans and creators.
The Good
Love the cover art
The Bad
Dreadful cast
Horrendous writing and direction
Unforgivably boring.
