Seance – DVD Review

Here’s a fun little recipe I found. Take the janitor from Scrubs, make him a psycho killer ghost, and place it in the WORST dorm in the history of college. And you’ve got Seance.

And really, it actually works. This is a surprisingly not terrible movie. There are some little nit picky things, but overall it’s pretty good.

Four friends are staying in there dorm over Thanksgiving break. Kandis Erickson thinks their room is haunted by a little girl ghost. I know, little girl ghost, stop me if you’ve heard this before. Both of her roommates think she is crazy as does one of her roommates’ boyfriend. But the boyfriend being the fine upstanding man he is, decides they should have a seance to bring the girl back and have a talk with her. After the seance they find out, you can’t bring back a spirit that is already there. And since the little girl was already there, she couldn’t be called back, but they did open the door for one James Spence (Adrian Paul).

Spence was a murderer during his life, and got the electric chair in 1973 for the murder of five girls in five states. They never say if the little girl ghost was one of the girls he was convicted of killing, but they do show that she is a girl he killed. That story line plays out in Ring meets Grudge type of way. In The Ring the girl is thrown in a well, in Seance it’s an elevator shaft. And they also use The Grudge to show how it happened with the flashback to a scene that explains everything.

But knowing how the little girl died and who killed her doesn’t stop the friends from having to deal with the released killer ghost. So they come up with ways to try and rid themselves of the ghost. The first attempt is to get him to posses a parrot and smash the parrot’s head with a hammer to kill him. That plans ends with the ghost possessing the boyfriend and forcing him to commit suicide which some how doesn’t kill the spirit. Watched that a couple times and still don’t understand that part. But that leads to the rest of the group trying to get out of the building and running into the ghost in the basement which leads to one of the most blatantly stupid things a movie has ever tried. They electrocute the ghost. How does that happen? Ghosts aren’t anything, they’re air. They don’t have matter to them, and yet, they electrocute the ghost. This makes absolutely no sense to me. And again, somehow that didn’t kill it, so they have to keep trying.

And the other thing I liked about this movie is the cop at the end. You always see the cop talking to one of the survivors at the end of the movie, but you never really hear the cop talk. This cop gets a line though, and it’d one of many funny lines through out the movie. “SO far you’ve given me three dead bodies and a killer ghost, you expect that story to fly?” It points out the insanity of the movie and is pretty funny. Which is a running thing in the movie. It’s a pretty funny movie at times. And that’s half the reason you get a horror movie, to laugh.

The building, however, takes away a great deal from the movie. This is supposedly an actual dorm on an actual college campus. Complete with an ID Scanner to get in the building. However, once in the building, it is a pile of crap. The one girl says there are rats everywhere. There’s an entire floor under construction. The entire building looks like it’s ready to be condemned and isn’t fit for anyone to live in. The building also plays into plot holes. When ever they show the outside of the building the rooms with lights on, that is supposed to show the room the actors are in, is about 4-5 floors from the top. Yet, they live on the 9th floor. And numerous scenes in the movie take place on the 20th floor. That’s not the only hole or mistake. In the first scene, it’s night out, the girls are all sleeping, one of them gets up to go to the bathroom, another one follows moments later, and in the background, it’s sunny, and gives the feeling of it being morning. Flash to outside, and it’s night and stormy.

The actors are all okay and seem well cast. Adrian Paul is terrific as the killer ghost. He’s just creepy the way he glides around and appears to take joy in killing people.

Some of the shots are real 4th grade level. Nothing mind blowing, but most of it is OK. A lot of it is shot with a blue tint, because everything shot in blue is scary.

Audio is OK. There is, however, a part near the end where they missed a light bulb breaking

When “Interactive Menus” are one of the listed features on the box, you know you’re getting slim pickings.

There’s a behind the scenes making of with interviews with the cast and some of the crew.
Trailer for the movie and some other movies.

Surprisingly not terrible. Good acting, raised by Adrian Paul. Not a jump out of your chair, scary movie, but more cerebral terror. And even that isn’t that terrorizing. We’re not talking Ahmed the Dead Terrorist unterrorizing, but it’s not The Grudge or The Ring. It does have a very Japan horror feel to it. If you’re a horror fan, you can do a lot worse. If you’re a teenage boy looking to get some action from a scary movie, you could probably do better, but this isn’t your worst bet.

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Windchill Films presents Seance. Directed by Mark Smith. Starring Kandis Erickson, Tori White, AJ Lamas and Adrian Paul. Written by Mark Smith. Running time: 88 minutes. Rated R. Released on DVD: April 22, 2008. Available at Amazon.com

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