Wednesday, February 13, 2013

The Cinema File #112: "6 Degrees Of Hell" Review


I never thought I'd say this particular series of words in this specific sentence construction, but after watching 6 Degrees Of Hell featuring a wrap around cameo by Corey Feldman, man, that movie needed more Corey Feldman.




6 Degrees Of Hell is an independent horror movie about psychics, demonic possession, cursed artifacts, demons, evil clowns, and about twenty or so other things all mashed together in a big mess of hard to follow, badly put together nonsense. The concept is actually quite novel, "what if one of those fake Haunted House attractions was taken over by real monsters," but its just so poorly executed and bogged down by so much unnecessary plot. The last act is an explosion of insanity as the film finally exploits its premise for all its worth, but up until then, there is just nothing going on, or rather, everything going on, none of it done well, and no reason to stick with it to get to the fifteen to twenty minutes of actual entertainment.


I can't for the life of me even recount what was happening in the story to set up that last act, despite how important the filmmakers evidently thought all of that shit was. There are all these different threads with a psychic girl and a demon possessing a guy tied up in a barn and a ghost hunters show, but none of it was engaging in the least. I've never seen a movie try to do so many things at once and at the same time try so little to make any of it interesting in any way. The only highlight through it all was Feldman, who plays a paranormal investigator who pipes in every now and then to try in vain to make sense of the events, as told to him in flashback by the last surviving witness. Needless to say he fares no better than I did. Do you get that, the only bright spot in this entire movie, is Corey Feldman.


Okay, that's not entirely fair as snark goes, because to be quite honest, I don't mind Corey Feldman. He's no Brando, but then he never tries to be anything more than he is and usually makes the low budget schlock he appears in better for having been there. I can't even begin to tell you how much I wanted this to be his story, and not one following these boring teenage soon to be victims. The movie essentially ends where it should have started, with Feldman's investigator about to enter the haunted establishment to see for himself if the stories are true, but by then, we've already been through it with characters we don't care about, so its just a slap in the face more than anything.
 

The movie was actually filmed in a real professional Haunted House, though I'm not sure how many of the actors portraying the various monsters inside are employed there, and how many are just from the cast of the film. Its a good enough advertisement for the place, with the last act serving basically as an extended trailer for its many and varied horrors. I wouldn't have even minded the crass commercialization of it had we just gotten a better set up. The first hour of this movie practically dares you to stay for the end, and I can honestly say that if I was not intent on reviewing it for this site, I wouldn't have. And I assure you, its not worth it. There is definitely some stylish imagery and a few moments that barely pass for entertainment, mostly in the last act, but overall, 6 Degrees Of Hell is an almost complete waste of time.

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