johannes2000-1 It wasn't that bad, but it all impressed as a bit amateurish. I love Ouija-board horror flicks but here they tried to give it a very complicated background with just to many coincidences to keep up the credibility. The acting is so so, the special effects (if any) are mediocre but there ars some inventive killings (like the girl smashing down through the glass roof, that was pretty awesome!). And I loved the last ten minutes when the last standing hero is facing the djinn, all of a sudden the movie grew to a higher level. All in all I was reasonably entertained.

Nitzan Havoc Honestly, I am slowly but surely losing all faith in the IMDb rating system. At the moment, this film is rated 4.7, and in my humble opinion that simply isn't fair. I consider myself a Horror fan, and I really enjoyed Long Time Dead.I've seen comments and reviews stating that the acting and script were bad. While people are entitled to their own opinion, I have to disagree. The acting and script might not have been Oscar material, but that doesn't make them bad. We are talking about a film that from the beginning revolves around like 7 characters, so having no characters stand out simply means that all the cast had around the same level of talent. As for the screenplay - I thought the story was pretty good, the whole Ouija-Board/Occult/Demon combination worked rather well. Cinematography and effects were also quite awesome, nothing too fancy and no "overkills", just the right dosage. All in all, I enjoyed every minute, and while Long Time Dead (not the right title in my opinion) might not have been one of the best Horror films I've seen, it's a long way from being one of the worst. Seeing such underrating frustrates and annoys me, and I feel like rating it 8 just to increase the average ratings. However, remaining objective and honest, I'll stay true to my original opinion and rate it a 7. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good scare!

manchester_england2004 Britain has a long history of horror movie productions, with the heyday for such movies being the period of the late 1950s to 1980. Hammer, Amicus and Tigon combined produced the vast majority of British horror movies during this period and helped to keep the industry alive in the 1970s when American investment dried up. Two excellent independent directors, Pete Walker and Norman J. Warren, succeeded them in the mid-1970s and continued their excellent work.Some viewers of movies from the British horror heyday get the false impression that they were all about vampires, monsters and witchcraft. Well, I admit there were plenty of examples of this type of movie but they were plenty of other types that fall well outside this category. Take for example, Hammer's DR. JEKYLL AND SISTER HYDE or the Amicus anthologies or Pete Walker's FRIGHTMARE. Or what about a movie that was not produced by any of the sources I mentioned - THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE.Since the 1980s, there have been very few British horror movies worth mentioning. The British movie industry has tried unsuccessfully for nearly 30 years to mimic the style and content of infinitely superior American movies rather than staying to its true roots.LONG TIME DEAD is one such unsuccessful example - funded in part with taxpayers' money through the UK Film Council. British people have the right to be angered their hard-earned cash has been put towards such a travesty as this without them having any say in the matter.The plot of this movie sounds really great on paper - a group of students having an all-night party start messing around with a Ouija board and unleash an evil Djinn. One-by-one they are murdered in gruesome ways, leaving the survivors to solve the mystery.Those who say this movie is a throwback to the heyday of British horror are simply wrong. The movie is very clearly inspired by superior recent American teenage movies such as I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER and URBAN LEGEND to name just two. There are even a few nods to modern minor classics such as SCREAM and one stylish nod to THE EVIL DEAD.Unfortunately the final result of this movie is something less akin to the decent movies mentioned and more in common with lame cheap straight-to-DVD movies such as THE CHOKE and ONE OF THEM. As in those two movies, characters disappear for long periods of time without explanation. And when any are killed, their friends soon forget about them.As one would expect with this type of movie, the acting is unilaterally awful, ranging from no acting to overacting. Joe Absolom was more interesting to watch as Matthew Rose in the British soap, EASTENDERS. He was a good choice of actor to have in this movie but his talent is completely wasted.The dialogue in LONG TIME DEAD is truly terrible. I was reminded of another British horror movie made around the same time called CRADLE OF FEAR. However, CRADLE OF FEAR was much funnier and enjoyable on the "so bad it's good" level thanks to some overacting on the part of lead actors, some weirdo characters who were interesting to watch and cheesy special effects.The score for this movie has nothing at all to do with the horror theme and sounds just like a random pop song of the kind Hollywood choose to tag on to the end of their movies. It is not worthy of a British horror movie. Listen to the scores of movies from Britain's horror heyday and make the comparison.Perhaps the worst crime of all in this movie is the sheer tedium. There are long periods of time when nothing is happening. Characters are wandering around checking out places but there is no suspense, no tension. There are only the clichéd jump scares that became worn 20 years ago.The movie does have a few good points. The killing scenes are well-executed, leaving the most gory effects to the imagination and there is at least some attempt at a decent build-up to them. It is only for this reason that I give the movie a rating of 2 rather than 1.Overall, I do not recommend this movie at all. American viewers would do better to stick to their own movies, they are far superior. Those wanting to see a proper British horror movie should do themselves a favour by seeking one out from the 1950s, 1960s or 1970s when we had proper talent in this field.

Paul Andrews Long Time Dead opens to a caption that informs us that we're in 'Morocco 1979' where a group of people are holding a séance which gets out of hand when a fire demon called a Djinn appears & supposedly kills everyone... Long Time Dead then cuts to present day London where four house-mates, Rob (Joe Absolom), Liam (Alex Newman), Webster (Lukas Haas) & Stella (Lara Belmont) are planning to go out for the night. They hook up with their soon to be new house-mate the drug dealing Joe (Mel Raido) & three friends, Lucy (Marsha Thomason), Spencer (James Hillier) & Liam's girlfriend Annie (Melanie Gutteridge). While sitting around at a club they begin to have a discussion on what the biggest buzz in life is, from this rather innocent sounding topic the subject of séance's is brought up & for some reason they all decide to hold one. They find a suitable venue which appears to be in attic space above the club & begin, unfortunately they release the fire demon Djinn which spells the words 'ALL DIE' out on the Ouija board which freaks them all out, as it would I suppose. Shortly after Annie dies in an accident & her body has burns on it, the remaining member's of the group feel something is wrong & do some research which leads to some unexpected answers & the discovery that maybe not everyone is as they appear or who they claim. As more of the friends continue to die in accidents a way must be found to send the evil Djinn back before it completes it's mission to kill all those who summoned it...Directed Adam Marcus I thought that this English & French co-production was a somewhat modest & undemanding way to pass 90 odd minutes. The script by Eitan Arrusi, Chris Baker, Daniel Bronzite & Andy Day really isn't anything special & I can't quite believe it took four writers to come up with this. Generally speaking Long Time Dead is rather slow & uneventful & the characters are so bland & similar with most of them looking & sounding exactly the same & the only one's I could really distinguish between are Lucy because she's black & Joe because of his hair! Everyone else barely registered with me & that made it very hard to care about anyone or anything, oh & they're an unlikeable bunch of teenage stereotypes as well which didn't help the film. The script also features various lapses of logic, at the end I just couldn't stop thinking that it was a bit of a coincidence that a bunch of kids would just happen to hold a séance & summon the exact same demon that their landlord & one of their Father's did years earlier, a fact which they only discover later on in the film. There is another scene in particular I keep thinking about that sums Long Time Dead & it's silly script up, when two people break into a police guarded house & turn the lights on only for the police officer on guard to be conveniently looking in the opposite direction & only looking back at the house literally seconds after the lights have been turned off. I also hated the scare tactic's that director Marcus employed, I mean people hearing noises only to have one of their 'friends' grab their shoulder & apologise for scaring them. What do these people think will happen exactly? Can't they just call out & say who it is that's creeping around in the shadows? Long Time Dead uses this clichéd & lazy technique on a number of increasingly annoying occasions. There are also plenty of cheap demon point-of-view shots which presumably help save money by not having to show the demon itself. On the positive side it tells it's story well enough I suppose & while it's not exceptional Long Time Dead is a well made film generally speaking. I also liked the ending where the Djinn appears to win, it's nice not to have a happy sugar coated ending for a change. Long Time Dead is one of those horror films that has nothing really wrong with it & entertains to a certain extent but suffers by being just so average a few script problems that should have been ironed out especially since four people worked on the thing. The gore quotient is sadly lacking with nothing more graphic than a few splashes of blood & someone being burnt. As for the Djinn itself the best the filmmakers could come up with are some CGI demon eyes on an ordinary actor. There's no sex or nudity either but there is some swearing & drug usage which the film treats lightly & doesn't say is right but neither does it say it is wrong just that it's a normal teenage thing to do. Overall I thought Long Time Dead was a slightly below average horror that didn't do much for me but at the same time I have seen much worse & at least it kept me watching until the end. Don't spend any sort of money on it but if you can catch it on TV for free & there's nothing else on then it's probably just about worth an hour & a half of your time, but only just.