Dead and Gone

On paper "Dead and Gone" truly sounded like an entertaining and potentially imaginative new zero-budgeted little horror flick. The basic plot description is original, the remote forestry settings are marvelous (with echoes of "The Evil Dead" and David Lynch's "Twin Peaks") and the trailer clearly indicated a mixture of black comedy, splatter and psychedelic plot twists. Unfortunately, however, the finished product is an utter mess of a film that turned out boring and ridicule instead of inventive and compelling. It's difficult to point out what exactly went wrong here, but debuting writer Harry Shannon and inexperienced director Yossi Sasson obviously lost their grip on the screenplay right from the beginning. The intended effect of 'is all this happening for real or just occurring inside the protagonist's mentally unstable mind' is never reached and Quinten Jones' performance is far too weak for anyone to care about his gradual descent into madness. He depicts a lowlife actor married to a much older wife who's in a permanent state of coma following a plastic surgery gone awry. The wife's family refused to include Jack in the testament, so he saw no other option than to kidnap her body and hide in a secluded mountain cottage. This happens to be the same cottage where an entire family was brutally slain nearly forty years ago and, on top of that, the closest neighbors are either homosexually perverted delivery boys or desperate sex-craving female deputies. As Jack slowly loses his mind, his wife awakes from her coma and mocks him. Eventually he has no other choice than to pull the plug on her, but the mean-spirited shrew keeps coming back in further evolved states of decay. "Dead and Gone" is primarily a very boring film! The story repeatedly follows Jack's irrelevant and pointless daily routines of running through the woods, draw hideous designs on his porch, chop wood and bicker with his chain-smoking dead wife. The cottage's sinister past is hardly even referred to anymore after the opening credits and Jack's interactions with the deranged locals seemingly just serve as time-filling footage. There are so many other interesting aspects that remain unprocessed, like Jack's liaison with the family attorney or the bizarre war traumas of sexy deputy Kate. "Dead and Gone" features nothing even remotely resembling an horrific atmosphere or nightmarish imagery. Usually, low-budgeted independent horror flicks like this have to rely on grainy cinematography and/or deeply perverted insinuations, but this movie looks and feels as it was made by freshly graduated film students who wanted to do everything nicely by the book. The make-up effects are often downright pathetic and evoke laughter instead of frights. If this was meant as homage to the original "The Evil Dead", then Sam Raimi definitely shouldn't feel honored. The acting performances are miserable, with the one notable exception of Felissa Rose as Jack's attorney. Fans of nonsensical Z-grade horror smut will certainly recognize her odd face, as she was the one and only Angela from "Sleepaway Camp" in 1983.

David Lynch meets Evil Dead 2 with some Deliverance thrown in? Trying to make sense of this film is like trying to find something worthwhile in the last eight years - it isn't going to happen.

If you are looking for typical horror with breasts and gore, it has that, although the gore is more Japanese style with the pumping blood after heads roll. You will, of course, enjoy the display by Gillian Shure (Disturbia) as the Constable.

But what the film really contains is a story of madness. Did Jack (Quentin Jones) bring the madness with him when he took his comatose wife (Kathrine Bates) to a haunted cabin, or did the ghosts of the cabin infect him to the point where he killed and killed again? It may take a couple of watchings to be sure and, even then, I doubt you will be. Good performances by Quentin Jones and Robert Herrick.

Fans will be surprised by the cameos: Kyle Gass (Tenacious D), Marilyn Ghigliotti (Clerks), Zack Ward (Freddy vs. Jason) and Felissa Rose (Sleepaway Camp).

Watched it on DVD without knowing anything about it, there was no plot synopsis, no rating, nor any comments on IMDb as I inserted this disc on its release date.

Early on it is clear that it is very low budget, I later learned that it was approx. $500,000. The video is of sharp quality but without Hollywoodesque professional lighting. That part might actually please some viewers.

An interesting shamble of actors show up for this one, several B celebrities from various professions who may or may not be known to you. I particularly liked the female law enforcer, mainly because of her looks; but also because of something else in her character. The acting in this film, while unimpressive, is not the problem. The main story is thin and its background story alike, but this isn't the problem either. Many aspects of this movie are found lacking, such as the dialogue, but not lacking enough to make me dislike the film. No, the problems I perceived were about pacing, logic and the lack of ever coming close to being scary. Because that is how I like my horror movies - scary. This one isn't.

I cannot recommend it to anyone in particular, but horror fans like myself will watch this regardless of warnings. So I wish you pleasant viewing. :)

I just finished watching this and I must comment on how well this film worked. I walked into it with no expectations, and walked away feeling like, finally, there's some hope for the horror genre yet. Even with a relatively low budget, the movie had good story, decent acting, gore, and none of the generic cliché moments that plague today's teeny horror films. With a nod or two, some purists will see the links with films such as Amityville Horror, The Shining, Poltergeist, Evil Dead 2 & even the Troma classic Mother's Day. If you are a fan of the brilliant style of horror from the mid 80's, you will not be disappointed in the styling, story, and cinematography of this film.

Perhaps I shouldn't be writing a review as I had to turn off after about forty minutes due to the total lack of originality, terrible pacing, and the incredibly poor attempts to copy Japanese horror shock tactics. In addition the acting was largely terrible with the exception of the female lead who was interesting and likable both in appearance and acting style.

I couldn't decide what was more wooden, the cabin or the leading man who I was surprised to find was an experienced UK TV actor (although I'd never seen him in anything) and not a friend of the director who had never acted before. Ironically the character he played was an artist who had a shot at Hollywood stardom and blew it because he "sucked" at acting, I suspect real life will mirror art.

CGI was quite good for such a low budget film however prosthetic effects looked like body parts from shop dummies.

Despite all the negatives the visual style and lighting were particularly good as in places was the editing although the use of Matrix style speed ramping was completely out of place given the nature of the story.

As is becoming the practice with such films I suspect the other rave reviews are from people connected with the production (when will I learn not to believe them). Maybe this is why I'm being so harsh, you people have to stop doing this I simply can't believe anyone with any knowledge of modern horror could give this film a positive review.