Ten minutes in this movie was laden with toxic masculinity misogynistic bullshit. The intro scene is a highly sexualized suicide, followed by our classic "nice guy" main character volunteering with his church to clean up an old spooky abandoned asylum. He's meant to be loveable because he makes half-assed attempts to imply he's not okay with the destructive, sexist and cruel ways of his friends. But in the end it's just hand-waving. He says "come on man" when his friends talk about women as objects and cares about his church... though not enough to call the police when thousands of people show up to trash their renovation project.
Then a girl bets they can then summon dark forces by playing light as a feather, stiff as a board (if she loses the bet her boyfriend get to have anal sex with her). It's one of the more inane premises I've ever seen. Also, when the demonic possession occurs, the cheese factor is way to high, especially for a movie which was obviously not intended to be cheesy and is modern-made.
The rest of the movie is boring idiotic teenagers and lots more toxic macho bull. Plenty of rape threats & jokes, etc. All of this adds up to me not caring a whole lot about who lives and who dies. The characters all range from mildly shitty to incredibly loathesome. Also, no matter how bad things get they won't call the cops (in spite of the fact that we're shown over and over their cell phones are functional and connected). I feel like at some point jail sounds less bad than gruesomely being murdered by/murdering your friends?
There's also just tons of plot holes. Like being able to make holy water out of windex through the power of drunken wishful thinking (priest not required!). Also implying demonic possession is caused by Wicca because the moon... or something? And so many more. Just overall a really crass, poorly executed and ultimately not particularly scary movie.
In the end, the twist was pretty okay, and there was some well-done gore. The sets were also very pretty, if you're into abandoned asylums (and who isn't?) But it could've been done so very much better.
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Entertaining 1/5 Intelligent 0/5 Unsettling 1/5
Scary 1/5 Gory 2.5/5 Funny 1/5 Artistic 0/5
Representation of Minorities 0/5 Representation of Women 0/5
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