To be honest, the film falls short in between what we can know from the original 'The Exorcist' and Denzyl Washington & John Goodman in 'Fallen'.
The story idea is effing cool, really could have made a great 'demonic possession' style horror movie, but at that it fails too much.
Dear Tom Sizemore, visibly not in good shape (barely a year before his death), does still play his part, and quite well (reminding me of Leonardo diCaprio in Shutter Island).
So, what do we get? In the ending year of the American Civil War (1865), my guess, a Union soldier gets backstabbed while hunting down a Confederate soldier. Yep, them rebels had comrades, too.
Now, instead of dying, he somehow ends up in 'A Witch House', wherein an accursed family, or so it seems, has to endure faithfully, as one of their own has fallen to 'The Devil'. Means, one of the family is mental ill, anti-social, or similar. Back then, the biblical explanation was still popular.
By weird circumstance, that Union soldier, possessed, survives decades longer, and on his deathbed asks for a Detective to visit him.
The Detective (Tom Sizemore) had one unsolved case haunting him, and expects foul play (scam, fraud, trickery), when the possessed soldier shares his view of the story.
In the end, we realize that the 'possession' works by turning each killer of 'the demon' into its next body to be possessed. Henceforth, the only way to trap the demon is by either warning those trying to kill it, or otherwise preventing them from it. For, if not, then the demon starts by slaughtering their loved ones, until a new killer aka supplicant body shows up.
This is the kind of horror, where good people still try to do 'the right thing', not villains, criminals, drug addicts. It has enormous story-potential, but that makes it harder to tolerate the boring, cliché, and badly done parts of the movie even more. Still lame at 120% playback speed IS lame.
The movie is also impaired by clearly low-budget funding, it could look MUCH better, if done properly.
R. I. P., Tom Sizemore. Still, a remake of this movie could do much better by not only stumbling through the tropes, as even dedicated movie-making students do better these days.
The story idea is effing cool, really could have made a great 'demonic possession' style horror movie, but at that it fails too much.
Dear Tom Sizemore, visibly not in good shape (barely a year before his death), does still play his part, and quite well (reminding me of Leonardo diCaprio in Shutter Island).
So, what do we get? In the ending year of the American Civil War (1865), my guess, a Union soldier gets backstabbed while hunting down a Confederate soldier. Yep, them rebels had comrades, too.
Now, instead of dying, he somehow ends up in 'A Witch House', wherein an accursed family, or so it seems, has to endure faithfully, as one of their own has fallen to 'The Devil'. Means, one of the family is mental ill, anti-social, or similar. Back then, the biblical explanation was still popular.
By weird circumstance, that Union soldier, possessed, survives decades longer, and on his deathbed asks for a Detective to visit him.
The Detective (Tom Sizemore) had one unsolved case haunting him, and expects foul play (scam, fraud, trickery), when the possessed soldier shares his view of the story.
In the end, we realize that the 'possession' works by turning each killer of 'the demon' into its next body to be possessed. Henceforth, the only way to trap the demon is by either warning those trying to kill it, or otherwise preventing them from it. For, if not, then the demon starts by slaughtering their loved ones, until a new killer aka supplicant body shows up.
This is the kind of horror, where good people still try to do 'the right thing', not villains, criminals, drug addicts. It has enormous story-potential, but that makes it harder to tolerate the boring, cliché, and badly done parts of the movie even more. Still lame at 120% playback speed IS lame.
The movie is also impaired by clearly low-budget funding, it could look MUCH better, if done properly.
R. I. P., Tom Sizemore. Still, a remake of this movie could do much better by not only stumbling through the tropes, as even dedicated movie-making students do better these days.
