Customer Reviews

Skeleton Crew

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I enjoy small budget horror movies in addition to the blockbusters. I came across this movie at Best Buy, so I thought I would give it a chance. It's a cross between Saw and Hostel. The first 15 minutes start out great. I was very interested. Then the viewer learns that a "remake" of some snuff films is being made (then switch to the real movie). I always hate those movies in which movies are being made inside the movie--especially in horror films. Well, the "skeleton crew" finds the real snuff films made by a madman in the run-down mental hospital. The director becomes obsessed with them and begins killing the crew while filming it. After the first 15 minutes of the movie, it goes downhill fast. The characters are not likeable, and I really did not care if they got killed or not. It just becomes so ridiculous. Characters are walking around aimlessly in the building looking around corners. I really do not think this movie would even make it to the Sci Fi network 10 years from now. I watched about 3/4 of the movie then got up out my bed to write this review. The movie is so bad that I want my money back.

There are varying degrees of bad. Some of my favorite movies are what I call 'awesomely bad.' A few examples of this would be Gingerdead Man, Sick Nurses, Versus, or Chainsaw Sally. Unfortunately, Skeleton Crew doesn't fall into this category. This one is more of a 'Wow' bad.

To explain: The main character starts out surviving a car crash and walking to a nearby insane asylum for assistance. Roll Eyes Here. Anyway, from the very beginning, the actress playing the main character was not very good at her trade. Not very good at all. Beyond that, she had no screen presence, she is somewhat unattractive and she speaks in a brutish sounding Eastern European accent. I hate to sound so critical, but I seriously wondered who the actress might have been in bed with to get even this meager role. Perhaps she was the director's girlfriend or something. As it turned out, that exact scenario was worked into the plot. She was 'playing' a bad actress who was sleeping with the director. Aha.

Next, we meet the director of the asylum who is, in my estimation, perhaps the second worst actor I've ever seen in a movie. EVER. And for reference, the #1 worst actor starred in the horrible Beyond the Wall of Sleep DVD.
But then, we are shown that the actor playing the asylum director is 'playing' a bad actor. Nevertheless, all the rest of his scenes are bad, just like the main character's. Go figure. In fact, other than the young girl playing the character Anna, the movie is filled with bad actors well deserving of gruesome horror-flick deaths.

Finally, it is explained how the whole experience is actually a movie within a movie, within another movie. Sadly, all three movies are beyond redemption.

If you consider the sum to be strictly the whole of its parts, this movie should get a negative ranking, i.e., less than 0/5 stars. If for no other reason than some of the acting being quite possibly the worst I've ever seen, it should fail. However, I have to say I found something enjoyable in this film. Sure it is nothing more than a take on Hostel, and even glimmers of House on Haunted Hill, but it was fun. I know this review is going to sound terribly unhelpful, but I encourage you to give it at least a rental shot. Certainly not recommending a purchase, but a rental isn't a terrible choice.

Have you ever been very aware you were watching a movie?
Like the acting, & and unspecial effects were so bad you felt like you were just watching people make pretend?
Have you ever cursed yourself for an hour and a half about twenty bucks you'll never get back?
If you still care by this point:
It's a low-budget flick about a film crew making a horror movie in an abandoned haunted mental institution.
The same wacko-basket where 30 years earlier a doctor killed his patients for his own personal snuff films.
Guess what super-nova of a idea Mr. Director gets,
when they stumble upon said snuff flicks in a sealed off room containing a chair, a projector, and a giant popcorn machine?
Is he overcome with inspiration? Or overtaken by possession??
The movie itself reflects this whole inspiration theme by dropping more names than a public school attendance list.
Though it doesn't seem to play up the possession angle as much.
Just hints at it.
It's not a terrible idea for a horror flick mind you... I mean the film within the film.... the actual film isn't bad either.
Though the addition of spirits to the plot was unnecessary, and could have easily been removed, the overall idea was interesting enough.
With a bigger budget, and better actors this might have actually been a pretty decent flick.
The special effects were amateurish, which is essential in the kind of flick where gore is the star.
But they weren't bad enough to kill the flick, just tame it.
The acting is what ultimately seals this flicks tomb.
Most of the time it felt god-awful, though sometimes it felt like it might have been improving.
In the end it was bad enough to keep you from getting into the story.
The actor playing Bruce for whatever reason, played a doctor better than an actor. Go figure that one out.
If you have an extra hour and a half it's watchable, but it's also regrettable.
2 Stars for Sub-par.

MORAL OF THE STORY:
Inspiration is just as strong as possession.

ALSO RECOMMENDED:
The Devils Chair, Saw 1 -5, Hostel 1&2, Gag, Captivity, Live Feed, Frontier(s), The 8th Plague, Session 9, August Underground 1-3, Snuff 102,
Flower of Flesh & Blood, Men Behind the Sun, Henry, Wizard of Gore (remake), Windchill, Rose Red, Mirrors, 1408, The Shining.

Clearly the best part of Skeleton Crew is the first 20 minutes where *actual* horror and suspense takes place.

Immediately after that, the film is completely ruined by that very cheap and popular storyline direction that many films in the genre happen to be a victim of- a sudden realization that everything is just a big prank.

Or in the case of Skeleton Crew, all those suspenseful events in the beginning that involve a girl in a dangerous mental institution that you *believed* was something incredibly suspenseful and something you *believed* would make this movie a top notch thriller the entire way through, is actually anything but- what you're witnessing and enjoying is actually just part of a script that a crew is filming (a movie inside a movie, if you will) so right after a certain segment involving a violent and bloody death with an axe, you (the viewer) will be given a very annoying and surprising slap in the face when all that suspense that was building completely goes out the window in a moment of "Why would the writers DO this to me!" storytelling, and it never returns.

It basically means as soon as you find out that everything you've been enjoying is just a big lame horrendously inexcusable joke, you have to start over again with a new, less interesting storyline and try to pretend the first 20 minutes of suspense never happened. Unacceptable. It's an extremely disappointing way to write a storyline for a horror movie believe me, because all it does is completely fool the viewers and make them incredibly upset.

I've seen other films do the same exact thing to the storyline, and it never becomes bearable or even approaches anywhere near understandable why we'd be tortured in such a way, or how destroying the suspense in one fell swoop could possibly be considered entertaining. It's a disgrace to the entire horror genre. Avoid Skeleton Crew.

GREAT TITLE...for a movie about dead pirates. This is somewhat of a SAW ripoff with various torture/killing scenes but none of the "intellect" of the movie. The movie goes on for awhile until it lets you know that it is a movie within a movie. In the 1970's the doctor at this hospital (movie location) made snuff films of his patients. This movie is about that doctor. Then they find a hidden room which contained the actual snuff films. The director watches the film. Soon people start to die, but it is not a who-dun-it. The voices didn't match the lips (foreign). There was some language, simulated sex/oral sex/ girl-girl action. Some very minor nudity, but nothing worth the rental.

Skeleton Crew is sort of the "perfect storm" of painfully bad horror movies - a freakish combination of putrid directing, terrible acting, horrible writing, awful cinematography, a subplot that goes absolutely nowhere, etc. It's not that everything went wrong in the production of this movie - it's the fact that everything was wrong to start with, long before this skeleton crew of hack filmmakers ever set foot in the Finnish mental institution that serves as the location of the - for lack of a better word - "story."

So here's the deal. Back in the 1970s, this doctor at this mental institution went insane and started filming himself killing the patients in all sorts of tortuous ways. Steven (Steve Porter) decides the true story of "The Auteur" would make a great movie, so he's brought a handful of Finnish actors and movie production folks to that very location to film what he apparently thinks is going to be a fantastic horror film. That right there should have been an early warning sign that Steven and sanity weren't the best of friends. Midway through filming, the crew discovers a secret room in the institution which served as the mad doctor's private screening room for his self-produced snuff films - along with an undiscovered cache of the Auteur's private collection. Declaring it a pre-production research dream come true, Steven indulges in a snuff film marathon, rewrites the horror film he is making, and - increasingly annoyed at the lack of realism during filming - decides to take matters into his own hands.

Sure, the gore isn't all that bad, but that's little consolation for even bad-movie lovers to sit through ninety minutes of such pathetic filmmaking. There's not even any decent female nudity to help ease the pain of Skeleton Crew. The fact that the ending in particular has some real problems really just rubs salt in what is already a festering wound. Boy Scouts should get a merit badge for sitting through this entire film. It was a struggle for me to even find a character I could pretend to care about the least little bit, and I knew what was going to happen to her and everyone else because the whole story is exceedingly predictable. I don't make it a habit of saying I could do a better job of filmmaking, but I thought the filmmakers totally blew one golden opportunity of introducing a new twist to the story that would certainly have made for a compelling scene and might have saved the whole film from absolute mediocrity. Unfortunately, Tommi Lepola and Tero Molin were directing the film instead of me (or anyone else on Earth), so what you get is one stinking cow patty of a film.

Skeleton Crew is very bad and I MEAN very very bad low budget horror flick . The acting , if you can call this acting is so bad , all the people ( I dont want to call these people actors or actress ) are worthless . The guy who plays " The Auteur " HA HA ( sorry but I have to laugh ) my goodness . 1 star for the cover-art a BIG 0 for the movie .

I've been reading some of the reviews for this movie; and I gotta say that it's not as bad as people make it appear to me. The idea of this flim isn't actually bad. I mean having a movie crew making a movie based off some snuff flims in an asylum; and having the director of the project going all deranged and sadistic... it's kinda orginal if you ask me. Granted the acting is C Rated, with a C+ on the violence, it's really not a bad film to buy for the price Amazon is asking for {$14.99}. I personally think the idea of this movie is decent and could have been done a lot better. I think my favorite part of watching this movie was seeing the director watch the snuff flims and get "inspired" for his movie; oh and the ending actually made me go "Wow... how unexpected, nice". Overall it's not that terrible and not bad for your horror collection. However get it for a low-price; you'll feel more content I believe. Lucky there is NO SEQUEL, because I think it'd be actually horrible.