DVD Review: Skeleton Crew
Skeleton Crew (2009)
Studio: Starz/Anchor Bay
Release Date: June 21, 2009
Directed By: Tommi Lepola & Tero Molin
Cast: Steve Porter, Rita Suomalainen, David Yoken, Anna Alkiomaa & Riikka Niemi
Review By: Annie Riordan
An American director and a Finnish crew arrive at an abandoned insane asylum to shoot a horror film about the murders that took place there some thirty years prior. Apparently, a shrink had gone nuts and decided to make his patients the stars of his own personal snuff films. But things aren’t really working out. Steve, the director, keeps changing his “vision,” the Finnish and American crew members are clashing and bickering and the LA based producer is in no hurry to pay any of them. As the grumblings increase amongst the staff and stars, a couple of crew members stumble upon a hidden room in the hospital. Once inside, Steve discovers a hidden cache of film: the original snuff films themselves. Much to the disgust of his coworkers, Steve immerses himself in the snuff stash, determined to bring as much realism as he can to his own film.
But the cruelty depicted on the old films has a mind altering effect on Steve, and soon he’s going way out of his way to make his own shitty little horror film as real as possible. When he tricks his arrogant and vastly untalented star into actually killing a girl on film, it quickly becomes a free for all. With the remaining cast and crew trapped inside the old building, Steve begins hunting them down one by one, killing them and recording it all. And his victims, not being either very bright or very likable, all meet their gruesome demises without much sympathy.
Skeleton Crew fully and frequently admits that it is just a shitty little horror film, but its own self mockery doesn’t automatically make it interesting or fun to watch by any means. The acting by the entire cast is painfully awful: I am sure it was meant to be, but it’s still ass-puckeringly excruciating to watch. The victims do nothing to save themselves; wandering about in their underwear, refusing to become alarmed by the red flags their director is waving in their faces, stopping to get shitfaced drunk halfway through an escape attempt and forgetting the glaringly obvious. For instance, when one young man is threatened with death by hot lights, he forgets all about the nail studded baseball bat lying not three feet away from him, which he might have used to smash out the lights themselves. Really, if you’re going to be that stupid, you’re better off dead before you can reproduce.
The snuff footage itself is pretty nasty – people are burned alive, beaten to pulps and skulls are power drilled into Fulci-esque mush. The naughty nurse in the thigh high lace stockings is a goofy, cheesy touch and the entire film’s attempt to ripoff/pay homage to Silent Hill is worth at least one wry grin. It also decides to reference the Scream films rather late in the game, with the characters going on a long and mostly incoherent schpiel about the “rules of horror.” As the rules are ultimately ignored, and their delivery made by a girl with a rather heavy accent (there are no subtitles, but you won’t miss much anyway) the scene is a waste of time that gums up the works and should have been left on the cutting room floor.
Skeleton Crew is overlong, frustratingly dull and highly predictable. Again, I’m sure that was its intention, but as a spoof, it’s lacking one crucial key element: HUMOR.
Brutal As Hell Rating:
1 ½ out of 5
