begob An ancient Greek malignity turns a group of friends on each other as their mutual resentments rise to the surface.This opens on a weak prologue, and stumbles about with a contrived plot, unlikely events, and weak dialogue with mediocre acting.Mild gore & boobs etc. Lots of people bursting into rooms saying, "What the hell?" They grope for humour the odd time, but it never works.Best thing about it? Decent twist at the very end. So slightly redeemed.I see Robert Patrick was one of the producers.Your review does not contain enough lines - the minimum length for reviews is 10 lines of text. Please see the guidelines. Attempts to pad the comment with junk words can result in your account being blocked from future submissions.

Spikeopath I expected the worse, where given some of the outright scorn poured on Gabriel Bologna's independently produced TV style movie, has been quite scary in itself! Truth is, is that it is very much same old same old as regards genre tropes, but it at least does it well enough to not make this a complete waste of time.Set-up is via a prologue that establishes something murky and menacing happened back in Turkey 1927. Forward to the present day and a bunch of horny young adults converge on a cabin and find a mysterious board game that might relieve the tensions. Said game is of course a left over from that Turkey curse thing, a game which brings out all the pent up bile and fantasies that were previously lying dormant in this so called bunch of friends.What transpires is hardly surprising, the group turn on each other - and turn each other on as it happens - where Bologna throws all the "cabin in the woods" staples into the pot. Blood does flow, shrieks do feature, as does ink streaming out of the protagonist's eyes. Robert Patrick is under used as the creepy vodka swigging guardian of "his" island, and much of the youthful cast struggle to impact with conviction.Yet as the thongs and boobs cater for the like minded under sexed, and as the gore (refreshingly not over killed by CGI) keeps on a coming, The Black Waters of Echo's Pond still fills out its run-time with honest horror movie intent. Not one to rush out and grasp with bloody hands, but as late night cable time fillers go it passes muster. 6/10

lazarillo This recent movie is kind of in the vein of "Evil Dead" and is certainly no worse than the recent remake. Three couples (including Danielle Harris), a slutty female friend (Mirceau Monroe), and another male (James Duval), who is persona non grata with the most of rest of the gang, all show up on an island owned by the grizzled uncle (Robert Patrick)of one of the guys. In an effort to entertain themselves during a power outage, the group decides to play a strange board game they find in the attic (that no one outside of a horror movie would even recognize as a board game, let alone decide to play). The strange game quickly brings all the groups simmering resentments to the surface and eventually results in the usual full-blown demonic possession and gory murder. The end though has a nice twist.The movie features no less than three horror/genre cult figures in Danielle Harris (of the "Halloween" franchise), James Duval ("May"), and Robert Patrick ("The Terminator 2"). Robert Rodriquez's two identical twin nieces (the "Babysitter Twins" in his "Planet Terror" part of "Grindhouse") show up as a couple of, uh, bickering identical twins. There are also TWO black guys-- Harris' proud-to-be-black boyfriend and his back-stabbing "oreo" friend and co-worker, who has been promoted over him at work. Then there's Mirceau Monroe and her impressive breasts (who really should have received their own credit as they constantly upstage their owner). This is definitely a strong cast, especially for an "Evil Dead" knock-off that has been sitting on the shelf for several years.Of course, it is not a particularly SCARY movie. It also makes the mistake of promising a lot more sex than it ultimately delivers. Sure, you get Monroe (and her breasts) in a brief shower scene and the "Babysitter Twins" (or, more likely,their body doubles) running around in thong underwear. But the movie also PROMISES an identical-twin sex scene that never materializes, and a lesbian scene between Harris and Monroe that tragically takes place entirely off-screen (oh, the humanity!). The movie is still fairly effective without such sex scenes, so why even promise them in the first place? Despite these flaws though, which are pretty typical of a lot of sex-obsessed yet strangely prudish modern-day horror flicks, this is still a moderately fun horror movie, which I guess I'd recommend--yeah, why not?

Steve Pulaski I have been waiting an absurdly long time to see The Black Waters of Echo's Pond after missing my chance back when it had a limited theatrical release in April 2010. After that, the film vanished and wasn't released on DVD due to distribution conflicts until September 2013. I have been following its production, release, and lengthy stay in purgatory for sometime, as I did for other films such as The Poughkeepsie Tapes and The Worst Movie Ever!. I'm beginning to contemplate if I was put on this planet for reasons other than seeing film after film.Unlike The Poughkeepsie Tapes, I didn't feel overwhelmed by greatness upon viewing The Black Waters of Echo's Pond. Horror films, as a whole, are a complete gamble, and more-so for low-budget ones, which can either be stunning works of independent craft or redundant tosh. Here is the case where a horror film becomes so wrapped up in delivering a story that affects characters that it forgets to include the jolts we expect until the end, as if it forgot its main job as a fantasy-horror film.The film stars Danielle Harris, arguably the most famous actress here due to her role in the Hatchet films, along with James Duvall, Mircea Monroe, M.D. Walton, and several others as a group of friends who go out to a cabin in the woods for a weekend (if I had a dollar for every time I used a variation of the above sentence in a review for a horror film). They discover a board game in the cabin, which has been possessed with cockamamie powers from years past, and their choice to play the game allows for dark secrets and repressed demons to resurface, as well as a twisted turn of demonic presences to appear.In a basic sense, the film feels like an adult Jumanji, complete with the haunted board game and the uncertain circumstances that arouse from playing it. At very least the film remains mildly intriguing just to simply see where it will go. Often I find the first twenty-five minutes of a horror film, more-so than any other genre, to be the make-it-or-break-it minutes of a horror film. Very few horror films rebound after that first twenty-five minutes and I was always curious to see where The Black Waters of Echo's Pond would end up.That's not to say the project doesn't become flabby and a bit misguided in the latter half. As in real life, the bickering between the friends gets to be a bit insufferable. Conversations feel like they've been repeated and dialog clearly feels like it is becoming strained and repetitive. However, I applaud the trio of writers, Michael Berenson, Gabriel Bologna (who also directs), and Sean Clark for attempting to guide this horror piece into a more dialog-driven spectacle.On the contrary, when marketing your film as one of the horror genre, you need to deliver scares in some way, shape, or form. For the trio of writers, this seems like it was an afterthought. Most of the gore and horror elements arrive around fifteen minutes before the film ends, cementing that this wasn't the writers immediate focus seeing as it's hardly a focus at all. The scares are mildly effective, but often second-rate and only emphasize a blandly eerie vibe.What you're left with upon viewing The Black Waters of Echo's Pond is simply entertainment, a decent fantasy element exercised efficiently, passable dialog, forgettable scares, and some very nice black and teal cinematography that can only emphasize the uncomfortable atmosphere. Take it as it is and you'll find an experience at least more effective than the latest sequel or remake playing at the multiplex.Starring: Robert Patrick, Danielle Harris, James Duval, Nick Mennell, Mircea Monroe, and M.D. Walton. Directed by: Gabriel Bologna.