Christina's House (2000)

A girl selling cookies is brought into a house and killed. Christina and her young brother Bobby come home from school into the same house. They live there with their father James Tarling. Their mother is in a nearby asylum. Eddy Duncan is Christina's boyfriend and Karen is her friend. Howie Rhodes is the handyman repairing the house. Sheriff Mark Sklar investigates the missing girl.This is a cross between a murder mystery and a killer horror. It's flawed in both genre but it has an intriguing premise. The opening could lead to either a fine slasher movie or a fine whodunit. First, they need to hold on the house a bit longer. I had to rewind to ensure that both shots are the same house. The slasher part is not gory enough which limits its horror potential. The whodunit is undermined by the few possible suspects and the initial push for a monster in the attic. The potential never gets realized but it is interesting to contemplate.

10That's all I have to say about Christina's House (2000) .Any questions?The thing that hits me first is it looks like remnants of some old 8mm home movies at times, like when the boy is spraying the girls more or less unintentionally. In this case, spraying refers to spraying water out of the hose from the public water supply, not spraying other liquids from other than the public water supply or both or neither for that matter.Just spraying cool, clean public water, that's itI love this piece where the girl goes into her brother's room in her underwear looking for her journal and crawls all over him and I thought now crawling on him is not going to make him more likely to give up the journal, I'd be like "Oh journal, huh? I'm trying to remember, help me remember..."This is hot!They should splice in porno in spots like when the dad is heading to bed after locating the journal, it would be like what each of them was separately thinking after that moment."You need a haircut, boy with booze"And there's the rat in a trap

OK here's another from my WM "Two for $11.00" bin collection DVD. For a B movie, this one was actually pretty good. Admittingly, mostly because of the hot young girl w/ the huge cans. Everything she wore was very revealing; obviously done on purpose to keep your attention (and btw, it worked). The acting was, again for a B movie, on par. The story was relatively believable, albeit misleading from the cover pic and plot synopsis on the back (its not about a haunted house), and the editing was again, fair. Pros: hot girls with revealing clothes throughout the ENTIRE movie (definant +), a couple of brief bare boobie shots (again from our main character), decent story, and characters that you found yourself loving, OK, er more like liking, and hating. Cons: Overly predictable (once you realize its not a haunted house). Crappy/unrealistic props (why does the deputy drive a 1988 Crown Vic with the old andy griffith dual light pods up top? How cheap is that Sheriffs Dept?), and its fair share of boring down time. Anyway, if you like B movies, go to your local wally world and pick up this B gem for 5.50....its definitely worth that. Thumbs up.

Christina and her father and brother have just moved into an old rundown house where things go bump in the night, especially in the attic. Strange occurrences start happening like her diary disappearing, objects and furniture being moved around the house with messages of warnings, a dead body turning up and shady characters, but no one else seems to notice and she thinks that she is losing her mind. What makes matters worse was that her mum is in a mental asylum as she has basically lost her mind, so is Christina following in the same footsteps of her mum or is there more to it than some people are letting on? Not bad for a straight to video you ask? Ah, actually hold on. No really this is a below par film which borrows elements from every other horror film especially in the wake of "Scream", but it amazedly held my attention. I don't why but maybe it was the beautiful presence of Allison Lange as Christina… yep that was it was. Oh, surprisingly glossy production valves with some inventive camera angles and well-designed sets can't surpass a shamble of a story and script. The rag of a script is the usual dribble. While, the context of the film probably would've been better suited as an X-files episode. Anyhow, over-strained melodrama with horror elements (or clichés) comes to mind. Throw in red herrings, the usual teen antics, suspicious characters, investigating unusual happenings and a (laughable) twist and there you go. Even irrelevant sequences pop up that it could've done without and pacing was rather stodgy in parts. Oops I almost forgot, logic is pretty much thrown out the window, especially when it falls badly at the finale hurdle… the ludicrous revelation that turns into a trashy showdown that went on for too long. During this stage there was an overload of extremely bad puns and an unbelievably pitiful performance. Was there tension provided, no it's basically cheap thrills and cop-outs with a non-existed atmosphere, but a pulsating score was fair if sometimes out of place in certain scenes. Where's the splatter and fun you say, well you'll be disappointed as the deaths are too mundane and have little blood. Performances from John Savage, Brendan Fehr and Allison Lange were actually fair, well they didn't blow me away but for a film like this they were mostly reasonable with exception of one or two. These characters were the standard mould with the girl who's not ready to go all the way with her boyfriend and maybe going crazy, annoying brother, controlling father who seems to want his daughter for himself, snooping sheriff, sex-crazed boyfriend and quiet handyman. When it came to the ending, well not just some ordinary finale but a supposedly deeper ending it just didn't go down too well with me as it felt rather tact on.For what its worth it's a dud of a knockoff, but one that had enough elements to keep me entertained. But the ending or finale climax is where it went totally downhill and I couldn't give it more than a 3.