A group of ghost hunters spend a night in the haunted Jericho Manor. As events spiral out of control the group desperately try to escape with their lives.
The ‘found footage’ genre continues to limp on with a number of small studios cashing in on these cheap films, the Paranormal Entity series an example of this. Some are good; some are bad, but even taking into account the reported £20,000 budget of the Dead of the Nite there is no excuse for it being so woefully poor.
This film is so painful to watch an attack of Mustard Gas would be less damaging to the eyes.
Candyman’s Tony Todd is the only performance of interest in the abysmal film. Sadly Todd’s presence is short lived and the remainder of the film is left in the clumsy hands of this dreary cast of ghost hunters.
There is an attempt to introduce a new element to the genre with the film cutting back and forth between the CCTV footage and the detective watching it. The problem is the CCTV scenes are set at night where as the detective scenes are set during day. This clunky intercutting undermines the best parts of an already weak film with the detective scenes serving only to take the viewer out of the moment.
Half way through there is about 10 minutes that approaches not atrocious, with the CCTV being turned on and cast being alone in their rooms. The problem is you know a film isn’t working when the best part is when the actors can neither be seen nor heard.
!SPOILERS!
The reveal that the Manor isn’t haunted but it’s a serial killer dispatching off the group was good, initially. But was soon undermined with terribly choreographed death scenes, topped off with an ending that is just embarrassing for everyone involved.
There’s always a temptation to check out terrible films on the hope that they’re so bad they’re good.
This is not one of them.
Check out Grave Encounters instead.
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