Crazy Eights - After Dark Horror Fest
by James K. Jones
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Actor: Dan DeLuca, Dina Meyer, Frank Whaley, George Newbern, Traci LordsDirector: James K. Jones
Brand: Lions Gate
Writer: Dan DeLuca
Writer: James K. Jones
Writer: Ji-un Kwon
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language)
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 80 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-03-18
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Lions Gate
Product features:
- Actors: Traci Lords, Frank Whaley, Dina Meyer, George Newbern, Dan DeLuca.
- Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC.
- Language: English. Subtitles: English, Spanish.
- Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only).
- Rated R. Run Time: 80 minutes.
DVD Reviews of Crazy Eights - After Dark Horror Fest
DVD Review: A noteworthy cast cannot connect the dots quick enough before they die
Summary: 3 Stars
The title of "Crazy Eights" refers to the name a group of kids gave their baseball team. When six of them gather for a funeral of the seventh, one of them points out that eight is one short of how many people you need to have on a baseball team. However, what they do not notice is that seven is one short of being eight, and, of course, that eighth member of the group is the reason why the others will start dying one by one. I keep waiting for these people to do the math (a line that is acutally used early in the film), but the crucial flaw in director James Koya Jones' film is that the audience is way ahead of the characters who never really catch up to what is going on.
This particular Horrorfest 2007 entry begins with a series of title cards talking about how in former days, that is to say once upon a time, doctors got to do all sorts of experiments on little kids. Now six of these kids meet up at the funeral of one of their friends, where they learn that he wanted them to find a time capsule they buried as kids. The time capsule turns out to have a surprise in it and the next things the six friends know they end up in a long-abandoned hospital. How they get to the hospital will not really make sense to you, but more troublesome is that paradox that these people all consider themselves to have been friends since childhood but they cannot remember the childhood in which they were friends (otherwise they would know where they were and why). It just takes too long for them to connect the dots, and since the set up for the film makes such a big point about the past, then making the connections should be important. Instead, people start dying, with a minimum of blood and gore (relatively speaking). The ending, which was rather abrupt, reminded me a bit of "The Blair Witch Project" in that things do come full circle, in a manner of speaking, but you are left unimpressed by the results.
Usually in a splatter flick you have a group of teenagers or young adults who, to varying degreees, do things to warrant their gruesome deaths. At one extreme I think of the recent remake of House of Wax, where these kids went out the way to deserve to die; at the other end of the spectrum would be a movie where the homicidal maniac just happens to target a slumber party of innocent (but scantily clad) young girls. "Crazy Eights" straddles both poles because on the one hand these people clearly did something as kids to have this ghost after them, but on the other hand they were being experimented on by adults, who would seem (at least to me) to bear primary responsibility. Consequently, I can never really decide if these victims deserve to die or not. In trying to have it both ways, the film ends up losing both ways. When the best thing going for a horror film is the setting, that is not good news (see "Session 9" for a better film set in an abandoned hospital).
There is a line on the back of the DVD from Hollywood.com about how this movie has "A twisted and dark `Big Chill' noteworthy cast," and having Gabrielle Anwar ("Scent of a Woman"), Dina Meyer ("Saw"), Traci Lords ("Blade"), and Frank Whaley ("Vacancy") would seem to evidence the point. But by the end of this movie you have to be wondering why they bothered. What were they attracted to here? Did they consider this movie to be a step up in their careers? A quick pay check? The comparison to "The Big Chill" is telling because that was a movie that clearly defined each of the members of the group, and the same cannot be said for this one. Whaley plays the jerk, Anwar is the sensitive one, and Lords the foul-mouthed one. The movie only runs 80 minutes, so there is not a lot of time to do a lot of things in this film, such as develop characters. However, in the final analysis it is the refusal of the film to connect the dots and provide a coherent picture of the situation that dooms "Crazy Eights."
It turns out that only three of this second set of 8 films 2 die 4 have any DVD features beyond the Miss Horrorfest Contst webepisodes. Only one of last year's set of film did not have commentary tracks and/or other features, so this parcity of bonus features seems to be another nail in the coffin of Horrofest (which did not even make it to the Zenith City for the second go round). Halfway through these films the results are certainly less impressive than last year's offerings. Tonight's attempt to reverse the downward spiral will be "Nightmare Man," which should at least inspire a nice song parody off of the Beatles' "Nowhere Man."
Description of Crazy Eights - After Dark Horror Fest
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