Scream of the Banshee (2011)

Professor Whelan stumbles across a mysterious box while doing an inventory for a large university.  When this box is opened it reveals a severed head that for lack of a better description screams at them and then disintegrates.  Later it appears that a supernatural creature is pursuing the professor and the students that heard the scream.  One by one they all have scary encounters with the thing.  This leads them to the retired faculty member who brought the box to the school.  The bad thing about this is that he is not quite right in the head and that the creature is pursuing them. 

I had hoped for something better then I got from this one.  First up it supposedly stars Lance Henriksen (at least he gets top billing) and he is barely in the movie.  When he does show up he really doesn’t have much to do except run around in a bathrobe.  This right here is enough for me to not like the movie.  I mean wasting an actor like Henriksen is just so annoying.  Especially when he is far more interesting then the rest of the cast.  The other lead, who actually does get some screen time, is Lauren Holly.  I suppose she is a decent enough actress, but she lacks the charisma to carry a movie like this and is much better served in supporting roles on the small screen. 

So we have a cast that I don’t think is very interesting tossed into a story that has some potential, but is derailed by terrible pacing.  We get a very creepy look at severed head in a box before the movie slows down to a crawl.  Honestly for the longest time all that happens is a creepy old lady yells a bit.  The body count on this flick is only 3 and none of the kills is that interesting or bloody.  Most of the run time is the Lauren Holly character running about looking concerned while watching online videos of the Henriksen character raving and ranting about something.  I think he is predicting the end of the world, but the movie does a terrible job setting this up.  I was very disappointed and quite honestly confused by what I was watching.  The Banshee as a creature has a lot of potential that is wasted here.

It is even more frustrating that they did such a bad job on the story because of the makeup effects work.  The Banshee appears in several forms during the movie and all of them are nicely done.  From the old woman, to a shark looking creature, and even the severed head they do look like creatures from someone’s nightmares.  I just wish that all this nice effects work were done for a better movie then Scream of the Banshee.  Still I did want to give them credit towards the one thing they got right.

If you can’t tell yet I’m not going to recommend Scream of the Banshee.  It is a boring flick that doesn’t deliver on a premise that was interesting.  I’d pass on this one.

1 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer

© Copyright 2011 John Shatzer