Tss5078 Ever since the release of movies like the Grudge and the Ring, a decade ago, we have been flooded with these similar movies and aren't you tired of them by now? The movie studios are, that's why all the recent ones have been direct to video releases with little to no promotion. I really don't understand why they keep insisting on beating us over the head with the same story over and over again. From Within is exactly like all the others, people start dying, most everyone sees it as strange coincidence, except for a hand full of people who see something supernatural. This time it's suicides in a small town, a bland, predictable take on a story that has been done to death! From Within has the distinction of being even worse, because of it's awful cast. This film proves that as long as you are good looking, someone, somewhere will be willing to put you in a movie, regardless of weather or not you actually have any talent. I choose this film, because once again, the description they wrote for it made it sound like one of the coolest horror movies of all time. Instead, what I got was boring, predictable, and a complete waste of time!

fedor8 Conspiracy theorists should have a ball with this one: two Jews play small-town Bible-hugging baddies in a rabidly anti-Christian movie. You be the judge; I couldn't care less; both religions are equally silly. Speaking of silly… Scene One. Two boys are sitting on a river-shore. They kiss. So is this horror film going to have a politically correct gay sub-plot, too?No. It's not two boys. One of them is the daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, the appropriately titled "Rumer" Willis. If I had to choose between a ridiculous name such as Rumer, and a normal girl's name such as Susan, I'd go for Rumer too: it fits her like a glove. The lip-pierced boy sitting next to her is one of the annoying actors from another disastrous horror flick, "Deadgirl".But FW has mercy on us poor viewers: only a minute into the movie, he shoots himself. He pulls the trigger and blows his tiny Hollywood brains, mere seconds after French-kissing Rumer. Coincidence? Kissing that woman would have driven the most mentally balanced man into suicide. But what about Rumer? When will she be killed off? How long before a hell's minion finally devours her or something? Not to worry, folks! Only a few minutes later, Rumer is killed off by the writers, too. Pew, what a relief! I don't have to watch this awful nepotistic produce for the rest of the movie.For every talentless, unattractive Rumer/Aniston/Dern that gets a movie career handed to her on a plate - just because her parents have great power in Hollywood and choose to wield it unjustly – there are 10,000 gorgeous and far more skilled aspiring young actresses that don't even ever get to audition for a toilet commercial. The main victims of this nepotistic corruption? We, the viewers. On second thought, who'd want to play in a cinematic turd such as FW?So it's quite fitting that Rumer's dad is played by yet another useless nepotist, Jared Harris, son of 60s movie star Richard Harris. Just watch Jared sob over Rumer's death: so utterly unconvincing; a perfectly awful display of nepotistic incompetence at its most horrible finest.FW has the usual run-of-the-mill horror-film BS, the standard to-be-expected one-dimensional cardboard stereotypes from the Horror Movie Guide To Making Useless Fluff: 1) the wise-beyond-her-years goody-two-shoes no-character-flaws-at-all girly, played by Rice, 2) the town bully (this time not a jock but the preacher's son!), played by the amazingly untalented Kelly Blatz who grimaces his way through this as if suffering a perpetual overdose of uppers; a dilettante (with the right Hollywood breeding), 3) the sensitive/shunned quiet loner – this time made to look and act like a whiny, depressed Emo, with horrible front hair that probably prevents him from seeing what's going on in the movie – which would certainly explain all the stupid decisions he makes, 4) the primitive, morally corrupt and stupid step-father, played with over-acting gusto by the very useless Adam Goldberg, 5) the unsympathetic alcoholic mother who dates losers, etc. Not to mention the usual boring clichés about small-town lynch-mob mentality and Christian fundamentalism. Hollywood, you damn bore, we know about self-righteous, corrupt, simple-minded Christian fundamentalists, you must have covered it in at least 90,000 movies. How about looking in the mirror for once, and giving us a movie about self-righteous, corrupt, simple-minded liberal Marxists, for a change? (The Christians worship the Big Black Book, the Marxists adore their Little Red Book; it's all the same crap to me.) At times, it seemed this movie focused much more on its obvious anti-Christian message than at furthering its horror plot – which appeared more like a sub-plot at times.Plenty of extremely silly shenanigans going on here. Here are the "highlights": 1) The scene when the preacher's son (Blatz) gives an impassioned religious speech to High School kids – who listen in awe(!!!) - is RIDICULOUS, perhaps the stupidest scene in this astonishingly dumb movie. 2) I said "perhaps". A scene that rivals it is Rice's kidnapping. This horse-manure of a plot-device has to be seen to be believed. 3) When Rice enters Emo's house and starts reporting about possession – right after another spate of murders – Emo's cousin from NY starts playing tritonic (evil-sounding) chords on the piano. I guess the director must have given her soundtrack duties as well (and seeing as how she can't act at all, that's just as well: makes herself at least useful that way). 4) The moronic plot-twist that has the hated outcast family at the center of the evil-demon witchery – making the movie's entire anti-Christian message almost obsolete! It turns out that the evil redneck (Goldberg) and the grimacing Blatz were RIGHT about wanting to kill them. Duh. (Who wrote this crap?) 5) Goldberg's utterly cretinous speech just before he burns Emo's piano-playing NY cousin.6) And you'll never guess FW's amazingly idiotic major plot-twist: it turns out the town's head preacher had a GAY AFFAIR with the boy who drowned in the lake, i.e. he was the one who had killed him! You've got to love the unintentionally comic mind of this turd's hopelessly confused writer.At first I was confused why Emo took the cousin's gun along with him. We all know that emos are spineless pacifists who would never shoot anyone – apart from themselves, of course (while listening to some awful 30 Seconds From Mars album). Sure enough, he took it to blow his Emo brains out.There are stark similarities in the Emo-Rice relationship to "Twilight" – and this certainly does not serve as a recommendation to see this turkey. As for the end-credits, you might find yourself giggling when you see the almost pythonesque sequence of suicide-corpses. This piece of crap is one for the history books. Whoever wrote this garbage shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a keyboard, let alone write another screenplay.

billcr12 Suicide by teenagers is a common theme and this time around, Rumer Willis, daughter of Demi Moore is one of the kids caught in the middle of the untimely deaths. Willis is Natalie, who is sitting on a rock with her boyfriend as he reads from a black book. After kissing her he pulls out a gun and shoots himself. Hows that for the opening scene of a movie. Another high school student, Lindsay, is at a clothing store shopping with her mother when Natalie storms in with the black book, screams about a girl following her and runs to a back room and when Lindsay's father checks out the situation, he finds Natalie bleeding profusely with a pair of scissors sticking out of her neck.Several hours later, Natalie's father hangs himself. Are we having fun yet? The towns folks then have a small holy war between the secular and holy rollers. More stupidity follows with an uninteresting storyline and very pedestrian acting to a silly ending.

Wuchak Death.That title blurb makes perfect sense once you see the film.2008's "From Within" tells the story of a Maryland town plagued by a series of apparent suicides. The people of the town's prominent church attribute the problem to witchcraft and zero-in on the Wiccan son of a witch who literally burned to death years earlier (written off as an "accident"). A Christian girl, Lindsay, takes compassion on the Wiccan dude, Aiden, and tries to understand him and what's really going on. Meanwhile people keep dying. Is this a curse of retribution released by the Wiccans? A small group of the Christians led by Dylan, the pastor's son and Lindsay's boyfriend, become desperate enough to pull out the guns. Havoc ensues.If you're interested in seeing another typical slasher flick "From Within" probably won't appeal to you, but if you're in the mood for a serious chiller with an original concept and truly thought-provoking material this is the film to see, particularly if you're interested in belief systems, psychology, spirituality and questions of morality.Some might criticize the film as anti-Christian but this is a superficial and knee-jerk reaction. The story's main protagonist, Lindsay, is shown in a completely positive light and most of the other Christians reveal positive and negative qualities. Is this anti-Christian or simply the way it is? Besides, the film clearly shows the negative sides of the Wiccans as well.The picture acknowledges the human need for belief systems to get through life and that people are still people regardless of what they believe. It doesn't tell the viewer what belief system to adhere to (or which one is 'right') but it does unveil the existence of dark spiritual power and the dangers of sin, so what's that tell ya? Some rightly point out that the influential mega-church in the film shows aspects of numerous Christian sects, which isn't realistic. I believe this was done intentionally by the writer (Brad Keene) so that the film's not picking on just one group. Hence, the mega-church is a microcosm of Christendom and represents all Christianity. Such an approach yields a group that is not fully believable even while having many aspects of truth. Needless to say, don't look to this film for a completely accurate depiction of legitimate Christianity. It's a movie, not real life.The way the death-curse works is very interesting: The curse is spread socially via the first person exposed to the latest victim; in other words, it's contagious. Also, the victims die via an evil doppelganger (an obvious type of the flesh or sin nature) who kills them in a way that looks like suicide. This supports the idea that evil can only slay or ruin or limit a person through their own volition, i.e. 'from within'. You could put it this way: The way of darkness is the way of self-destruction.I liked how the film shows members of both belief systems humbly admitting they made mistakes and willing to make things right, whatever the cost.The story shows the domino effect of human failing. One person's moral failure leads to a deadly cover-up & slander which brings about retribution and numerous innocents' deaths. On and on and on. Evil begats evil.As noted above, the film is truly thought-provoking. Lindsay sees her church's error and hypocrisy even while she experiences its positive aspects. She reaches out in compassion to the Wiccan dude, a purely loving gesture, but ultimately realizes that witchcraft is what released the death-curse. She's stuck between evil & error on both sides, what can she do? "From Within" is a horror film in the truest sense. Although it reveals a lot of truth about the human condition -- both good and bad -- it's not ultimately life-affirming. This is horror.One of the films highlights is the song played during the opening credits "This Voice" by Ane Brun. The song is outstanding, to say the least. It's from her 2006 album A TEMPORARY DIVE. You can hear the whole song on youtube.The picture was shot in Havre de Grace & Perryville, Maryland (it's nice to see a movie shot somewhere else rather than friggin' Vancouver and British Columbia).The runtime is 89 minutes.FINAL WORD: "From Within" is nothing less than amazing. It's original, absorbing, fascinating and provocative. A horror masterpiece.GRADE: A