CrazyEights

Crazy Eights (2006)

When a group of friends get together at the funeral of another of their friends all sorts of strange memories start to return to them. These memories and a letter left by their deceased friend, who killed himself, leads them back to the hospital where they all met. There they open a time capsule that contains all sorts of childhood memories, as well as a child’s body. Eventually they become trapped in the ruins of the hospital where they grew up together and start to put the pieces of a childhood spent being experimented on and observed. But how is this connected to the spirit or evil force that seems determined to pick them off one at a time?

This is one of those movies that I kept waiting to make sense. It starts off very creepy with many of the characters having bad dreams that seem to connect somehow. There seems to be something right beneath the surface of the movie that is about to surface and explain what is going on. But the strange thing is that the movie never makes any sense at all. After a while the movie begins to drag as nothing is revealed and no effort is made to explain what happened. Hell you never even find out exactly what happened to the little girl in the box and whether or not she should be the angry spirit that she is. Whoops spoiler I guess, but I don’t really care. This movie had me interested, lost me about half way thru and really made me mad that I had wasted my time watching it by the time the credits rolled.

If wasting a story with as much potential as this isn’t bad enough I was shocked at how talented and recognizable the cast was. Familiar faces like Traci Lords (The Tommyknockers), Dina Meyer (Saw), and Frank Whaley just to name a few. Basically the cast, including those not mentioned, do the best they can, giving good performances. But they just can’t overcome the material, which is lacking any real plot or motivation for what is going on. So a great cast of hard working familiar faces is wasted here. That is a damn shame.

The movie is shot is such a way that it does have some atmosphere and provides a couple of jump scares. The camera work and lighting work hand in hand with the great location they found to shoot in to make the movie very creepy. Even before they get locked in the hospital the barn setting and the house after it is just as effective and again help set the mood for the rest of the movie. The special effects are surprisingly good. Don’t expect the loads of blood you would get from a slasher movie, but there are a couple of decent kills that are handled nicely.

Basically I just really wished they had worked a bit more on the script. This is a movie that has a great cast, some good kills, wonderful locations, and was a solid script away from being a really great movie. As it is now I just can’t recommend it.

1 ½ out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer