Boo (2005) Reviews

• Messy Ghost Story

  claudio_carvalho2008-07-09

  The friends Emmett (Happy Mahaney), Freddy (Josh Holt), Marie (Nicole Rayburn), Kevin (Jilon Ghai) and his reluctant girlfriend Jessie (Trish Coren) decide to spend the Halloween night in an abandoned hospital. Meanwhile, the younger Allan (Michael Samluk ) meets the old friend of his father Arlo Ray Baines (Dig Wayne) and asks him to help to find his vanished sister Meg (Rachel Melvin) in the same spot. The two groups meet each other in the mental institution section on the haunted third floor and they find that they are trapped in the place. Jessie has visions from the past and discovers that the ghost of Jacob (M. Steven Felty), a former patient that raped a little girl and burned the hospital, is trying to escape possessing their bodies that melt down with his evil spirit. "Boo" is a messy ghost story, with a confused screenplay and poor development of characters, especially Jessie. This lead character and her relationship with her mad mother are the key point of the story, but their stories are awfully disclosed. Further, the character Kevin acts like an annoying moron. The group using an old elevator that works in an abandoned building is ridiculous. However, I startled in some moments with the eerie atmosphere. My vote is five. Title (Brazil): "Hospital Maldito" ("Damned Hospital")

• I was scared by the horrible acting.

  MrTacchi2006-05-24

  I don't get to write much reviews on IMDb any longer, but this movie made me want to join the bad reviews people had been giving this film. It's unbelievable that it actually made such a high score! I'm really led to believe that the actors and the crew had been voting here. The main problem in this film is the acting : is so outstandingly bad that it gets annoying. I didn't even care for the stupid plot, because the lines were so fake and unrealistic that I couldn't focus on the story at all. I think the director should have dubbed the movie all over, maybe that would've helped a little. The actors lacked any kind of emotion expressions whatsoever. Some may blame the low budget here, but I don't think that's a excuse for such a bad execution. For example, in one scene, a moronic blonde dude is watching his best friend turning into a monster, right in front of his eyes , and instead of being shock or held disbelief, he starts screaming(calmly and not-that-convinced) to the one guy that is trying to shoot the monster "don't kill my friend, he is my best friend" ; and when the monster finally gets shot, the moronic blonde dude starts complaining "you shot my best friend, I'm gonna call the cops" but the cops don't take his call rightaway, so he decides to break the cellphone, his one and only way to communicate outside (they were locked inside the haunted house)... Really, a painful movie to see.

• A cut above

  bugaboo-72005-11-15

  I hate using back-handed, "well it's better than the worst" compliments but, having seen my share of low budget horror movies of late, I must say that Boo! is certainly a cut above most of them. It's well shot, creating an atmospheric and eerie feeling not generally found in the genre today. The effects are well done. The plot itself is solid and there are some clever laugh out loud moments. On the downside, the pace drags at times and some of the dialog is weak in spots but not too much to be distracting. Also, there are a couple horror movie, "why the Hell are they doing that?" logic issues. The biggest distraction came with some of the casting. Most of the actors are capable although not great, but I felt one of the main characters was weak. On the plus side, the villain is terrific. (Sorry about mixing my tenses) Horror movies are a crap-shoot, usually more crap than anything else. But if you're looking for something better than most, I would recommend Boo! It's performance will make me keep an eye out for other Graveyard Filmworks productions.

• Nothing New

  dyana_ro2005-11-05

  The only way I could have found this movie original, would be if I have never seen a classic teenagers horror movie. It is very predictable and almost not at all scary. The actors....absolutely unexperienced or at least the acted like robots and the lines and situations were so illogical that they would rather make u laugh. i am a fan of horror movies and I watch a lot of mediocre movies, but this one really bored me. Maybe it is good enough to borrow it and make fun o fit with your friends, but in my opinion it's not worth it. I don't know what budget did the crew had, but it looked like a very limited one. Not to mention the different and many mistakes in the movie...I'll let u discover them.

• Good setting and some nice atmosphere, but the rest is pretty terrible.

  Li-12005-11-02

  Rating: * out of **** The straight-to-video market has actually produced a number of quality horror films in the last few years, so no longer should we automatically expect crap from the genre just because it happens to end up on rental shelves first. Quite hyped up by straight-to-video standards, Boo is unfortunately one of the more disappointing films I've seen in recent memory, not nearly the taut, scary experience I'd expected. Heck, it's not even fun to watch, which is the least I'd hope for from a movie about a group of teens stuck in a haunted hospital. What I just mentioned was the gist of the plot, though there's also a subplot about a guy searching for his sister in the hospital but it's about as awkwardly introduced as just about anything else here. Take, for instance, the opening scene, which seems to want to poke fun at the self-conscious horror flicks that once swarmed the market, but it's a scene that fails to produce any tension or laughs. This is indicative of the rest of the film as a whole. Though the movie appears to be a straight-up horror flick, it's hard to tell if there's an underlying layer of self-awareness to the whole thing or if it's just because the acting is so stilted, it's difficult to discern if the cast was even taking the film seriously. That's not to say there aren't already plenty of problems with the plot, the most obvious of which is that rather than playing it in a simple, straightforward manner, the script tacks on some of the most annoying plot devices the genre has to offer, most particularly the girl who has that inexplicable "psychic link" with the hospital. Any time the film looks like it might gain some momentum, this "psychic link" rears its ugly head and brings the pace to a griding halt. But weak as the story is, the acting is definitely worse, with not a single passable performance among the entire cast. They're not even convincing when they're re-animated "ghosts," to the extent that the director even ends up resorting to using reverberating voices to make them sound scary. I'm usually lenient when it comes to quality acting in the genre, but I'm beginning to realize how important competent performances are, seeing as I'd like a character or two to root for or at least someone who genuinely looks terrified by the situation around them. The gore is a mixed bag. Not badly done, but when created with CGI it fails to mesh in well with the more atmospheric approach that director Anthony C. Ferrante is clearly striving for. Though the film mostly fails to deliver, I've got to give the filmmakers credit for achieving a fairly decent sense of atmosphere and a pretty good setting, but that's as far as it goes. Such qualities do little good when the rest of the film is otherwise flat and lacking in scares, suspense, or even a sense of urgency. Worst haunted house flick since Dark Castle's Thirteen Ghosts? Probably so.