Grim Reaper – DVD Review

Film, Reviews

Available at Amazon.com

Director

Michael Feifer

Cast

Cherish Lee Rachel
Brent Fidler Dr. Brown
Nick Mathis Nick
Rebekah Brandes Katie
Benjamin Pitts Liam
Adam Fortin Grim Reaper

DVD Release Date: January 16, 2007
Rating: R
Running Time: 82 Minutes

The Movie

Rachel is a stripper who has a boyfriend trying to make his way through medical school. He spends all of his time studying while she spends all of her time taking off her clothes for other men and well, he’s not too happy about it. One night after work she is walking through the parking lot and gets hit by a taxicab that was for some reason heading through the lot towards the wall of the building.

Rachel miraculously survives and has escaped the clutches of death and the cold hand of the grim reaper. As she awakens in the hospital though, her confusion and fear start to set in big time because she can tell something is going on but can’t seem to find any help from any of the people around her. The next thing she knows, she is waking up in a mental institution with a few other patients who have all escaped death and stayed alive. They now realize they must band together to defeat the grim reaper before he kills them all.

Words can honestly not even begin to describe how I felt while watching this film. The first five minutes alone made me want to turn it off and find anything else on television that I could. The film starts with Rachel stripping in an old abandoned warehouse for about four men. Oh, and by stripping I mean that she is in a bra, a skirt, and some angel wings swinging around a pole about three times and then walking back upstairs. Then she gets hit by the car and ends up in the hospital. But she wakes up thinking she fell asleep in the bathtub and it was only a dream. Her boy friend gets killed by the reaper by checking on her, but then oh wait she wakes up yet again and now she’s in an institution.

Yeah, and about ten minutes later there is even another dream sequence.

The movie was just bad, plain bad. It starts off with no back-story, no history on the characters, and no continuity at all. Besides the boyfriend and girlfriend (Rachel and Liam), I can’t even tell you anyone else’s name from memory. And I only know their names because when they were on screen alone, a “creepy” voice would say their names really raspy.

After about twenty minutes of suffering, I found something in the film that I could actually begin to focus on. That being the fact that I don’t think they could afford a stuntman or woman on the budget for the cast, not a single one. If you’ve ever watch even a decent action flick before, you can tell when someone is being told “ACTION” and then simply throwing themselves onto a couch like they were heaved across the room. The funniest one is right at the beginning when Rachel gets hit by the car. She hops onto the hood and literally rolls over the entire surface of the hood, roof, and trunk before casually falling to the ground. It had to take her a good forty-five seconds to make it totally over the car.

The Video

The film is shown in 16×9 Widescreen Format and looks as bad as the movie is. I guess my feelings toward how horrible the film itself actually is plays a big part in how I feel about every aspect of it, but it’s true. The film just looks really bad and delivers nothing to help make it any more enjoyable.

The Audio

The film is heard in Dolby Digital 2.0 and sounds alright. There is nothing much too really hear in this film besides dialogue, a lot of bad screaming, and some horribly bad over dramatic music.

Special Features

TrailersSaw III, Crank, Murder-Set-Pieces, and A Dead Calling

The Inside Pulse

There is nothing in the world that should ever make you want to buy, rent, borrow, or be presented this DVD. There are no extras except for a few trailers and the movie is just God awful. And if it wasn’t for some decent trailers, the score may have gone negative. I have never seen a movie where there wasn’t even one person who did some sort of noteworthy acting until I watched this. In all honesty, Grim Reaper must have had a budget that was not even a fourth the size of the budget for Clerks. So go buy any Final Destination movie and you’ll see where they got the idea for this one but in a much better film.

The DVD Lounge’s Ratings for Grim Reaper
CATEGORY
RATING
(OUT OF 10)
THE MOVIE

0.5
THE VIDEO

6
THE AUDIO

4
THE EXTRAS

.5
REPLAY VALUE

0
OVERALL
.5
(NOT AN AVERAGE)