Dead and Gone

(2008) Dead And Gone HORROR

Anybody who crave to see different versions of Kubrick's "The Shining" should be able to like this film to which is a much lower budgeted version. Story shows a previous history that occurred in an isolated cabin in the neck of the woods when a husband shoots and kills his whole family which includes wife and child before shooting himself. Then the film jumps to the present time showing a young Englishman moving in with his wife on a breathing ventilator and in a coma which is later revealed was a result of a botched plastic surgery operation and they both ended up staying in this cabin was because of a poker game that this Brit won and decided to take advantage of it since he hardly has any money left! But before some of the revelations, he's also slowly driven mad by creating other people that don't exist or different character traits on actual people, it's suspected that this was a result of living alone with no one to talk to and that the cabin itself has a lot to blame as well because of a previous incident creating delusional thoughts and the film dwells on this a lot with more unsurprising revelations toward the end. The last five minutes of the film absolutely makes no sense despite being well made.

This sucked, big time.

Sock puppeteering is not acceptable in art. In other words, don't toot your own horn pretending to not be associated with, and in this case, the hack-write of this piece of trash.

This film was forced, the acting dry.

Done by people who just want to build up a resume.

Why build a resume of junk? Just to have a sheet of paper to point to? Or a page on IMDb? I love B films and never take them seriously, but trying to tell people to not take it too seriously after all the bad reviews is as transparent as the plot and story.

Stick to for-the-love internet zines. That way all your buddies can pat you on the back and make you feel like you have talent.

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.

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.

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.