The Legend of Bloody Mary (2008)

I just watched this film a few days ago on Netflix, as it is going off there soon. The story presented here is actually pretty good, it has a similarity to Candyman, but Candyman was inspired partly by the Bloody Mary story, so perhaps its only natural. That's the good, the bad is all over the rest of this film. This film feels like it was meant to be a short film and than they got a little extra money and had to fill in the time slot. The acting is on a lower level than Troma acting, even Ed Wood directed better actors. The ADR seems to very off, its not something I usually pay much attention too, not really need to pay attention, but it seems like the boom mic operator must have had trouble keeping it steady, cause the dialogue is very clear at times and than very distant sounding. The weakest part of the film is the camera work, now normally directors film a scene, than after getting it right they film the scene again for coverage, obviously this cost money and perhaps they didn't have the budget, but was the cameraman asleep or did something sexy walk by and make him not pay attention? I mean there are several scenes of exposition where the camera begins to film the shoulders or chest of the speaker, sometimes they only film the eyes or forehead, it is a real mess. No offense to the filmmakers if they happen o read this, as its not easy to make a film(its easier to get a film released, than to actually make a proper film), but I hope if they do see this they will try again at this film, as it has potential if done correctly 1 out of 5

The title of my review pretty much sums it up, but since I have to write at least 10 lines, here goes. You will not want to watch this movie if you want to see: 1.) fast pacing at any moment in the movie, 2.) fluent dialogue, 3.) smooth editing, 4.) good acting, 5.) suspenseful build-ups, 6.) more or less stable image that doesn't induce seasickness, 7.) good CGI.I also can't recommend this movie to people susceptible to claustrophobia, because half of the time the camera is pretty much shoved almost into the faces of the actors for no reason whatsoever. It gives the feel that everything was recorded in rooms barely large enough to hold both the actors and the filming crew.There are some scenes of people walking and driving cars, with no other apparent purpose than to lengthen the duration of the movie, even though the pacing is already sleep-inducing on its own. Some of these scenes are accompanied by music that feels out of place, unless you accept that this movie is geared towards a young teenage audience. These scenes look like a typical karaoke video but without the scrolling lyrics.The whole thing feels like separate parts which were just concatenated, without any attempt to get the pacing right. I'm not just talking about the different scenes, even within a single scene it's as if they recorded all the actors sequentially, making them say all their lines at once, and then interleaved these video streams. As a result, there are frequent unnatural and awkward pauses between sentences.And then there's the shaky cam, which is used at all the wrong moments. During a simple conversation between two characters, it's as if the camera man gets progressively more drunk and eventually is unable to track his subject even though it is sitting still in a chair.Even the sound has a low-budget quality to it. The clearly audible different background noises on the dialogue of actors in the same scene support my theory that each actor acted all their lines sequentially. They could at least have mixed some extra consistent background noise over the entire scene to mask this.My threshold for a movie that has something still making it worth watching is 5/10. I give this one a 3. There were some scenes that came remotely close to being scary, and the historical parts looked pretty good. But for the rest it felt like the filming project of a bunch of high school kids.

I give this movie a strong 2 out of 10. It's even lucky to even get a 2. Heck, i'll just give them an extra point for trying. The movie has HORRIBLE acting, the frequent pause in every conversation. They "fail" to even act as they are scared and other emotions that are common in all horror thriller movies. The scary scenes are not even worth the jump unless your a 5 year old just coming into the game of horror.I even think the last attempt of the Mary Warren movie which I think was published on 2005 or earlier was a a lot better. I stopped watching it after 30mins, yes! I said THIRTY MINUTES! This movie is not worth anybody's time, not even to someone with all the free time in the world.

Honestly, I'm not one to criticize movies but this one influenced me to begin. I could have done better and the only movie I have directing experience in was for a project in sixth grade. Unfortunately, this seems to be the case with 70% of all new horror releases and I have been quite the horror fanatic for twenty years.While the plot was as unoriginal and boring as most other B rated horror movies these days, the acting was the ignition for this bomb to explode. Every time Brittany Miller made a phone call and attempted to act, I would cringe in my seat as that was the true horror of the movie. The acts also bounced around everywhere, turning terrible into nearly unwatchable. I've never heard myself say aloud while watching a movie, "Oh, come ON!" As in, hurry up and get to the point already. The characters seemed to take forever in discovering anything.Twice I found myself holding the remote reaching my finger towards the stop button and literally had to force myself through the rest by true willpower. As an example of how bad the writing was for LoBM, take these lines for example: Character 1: "I don't know what I could do without you!" Character 2: "I don't know! What would you do?!" HE JUST SAID HE DIDN'T KNOW! I found myself laughing at these from start to finish, sadly.These people need to stop making movies and completely destroying the horror market. I would rather watch Trailer Park of Terror thirty times in a row than have to sit through this one a single time again if that tells you anything. Please... No more Mary remakes.