Oof. Seriously though, while watching this movie, I was quoted as saying to Bryce and my poor wife, “I didn’t realize they still made this kind of movie.” Dead Night is a movie that gets lost on it’s way to the end - where that is, I’m still not sure.
https://youtu.be/tyKyboTBsU4
I was decently excited to watch this. The poster and summary had a “cabin in the woods” quality to it, and I love horror set in the deep woods. I think my brain did some subliminal math with the title and the poster as well. I saw the two-word title starting with “dead” and the snowy woods in the poster and remembered Dead Snow (a Nazi zombie flick that’s great fun). Don’t let your brain make the mistake my brain made.
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Dead Night is for people who love bad horror. If you like to laugh at continuity errors, zany and confusing plots, large portions of unexplained but seemingly important elements – this is your swan song.
I would liken the feel of this movie to something that would be shown in the middle of the day on the Sci-Fi network in the 90’s. It starts off with fun dialog, a decent setup, and mildly interesting characters, then at some point a switch is flipped, and everything goes so far off the rails that you are left confused as to how things ended up this way.
My Rating
2/10
Spoilers
The movie starts out showing a couple making out in a convertible in the woods in 1961. The young lady hears something, and of course, the young man goes to check it out. A horrifying figure makes swift work of them both. An alien looking monolith is in the shot for a moment, and we are left wondering.
Cut to 2015. The Pollack family is on a trip for rest and relaxation, but more importantly because James Pollack (
AJ Bowen) has something incurable and his wife, Casey Pollack (
Brea Grant) has it on good authority that their vacation rental was built on restorative minerals. Their son Jason (
Joshua Hoffman) and daughter Jessica (
Sophie Dalah) are less than enthusiastic to be going on this vacation. Jessica has her friend Becky (
Elise Luthman) along for the ride. Jason and Becky clearly have a little bit of a crush on each other.
The family gets to the cabin and begins to get ready for their stay. At this point in the movie, the framing, dialog, and lighting are done well – so well in fact, that it tricked me into believing this was going to be great. It has plenty of artsy shots on the cabin and surrounding woods that last a little bit too long but are sometimes indicative of hints at later plot points.
Check Out Our Review of Slender Man
https://www.horrormovietalk.com/2018/08/13/slender-man/
As the movie progresses, I began to realize that all those artsy shots were for naught. The husband heads out of the cabin to find some firewood and eventually stumbles upon Leslie Bison (