Wages of Sin (2006)

Stop me if you've heard this one before. A quartet of young adults -- troubled and sensitive Sue (the lovely Ashlie Victoria Clark), her supportive boyfriend Ron (Brandon Michael), sweet gal pal Jane (pretty Lauren Zelman), and obnoxious stoner toolbox Taylor (the extremely annoying and unappealing Prentice Reedy) -- check out an old house located in the remote woods that Sue has just inherited. The unfriendly local yokels warn the kids about said house, but naturally the kids don't heed their warnings. Of course, the house turns out to be haunted by the evil spirit of a twisted preacher (blandly played by Billy St. John). Director/co-writer Aaron Joseph Robson clumsily mixes sappy romance, family dysfunction, religious fanaticism, eerie apparitions, spiritual possession, and supernatural hokum into a singularly insipid and underwhelming cinematic stew that fails to effectively jell as a remotely compelling or cohesive feature. The talky and uneventful script, flat acting, and excruciatingly sluggish pace suck all the energy out of the meandering narrative, thereby making this dead slug of a dud a real grueling chore to sit through. Worse yet, there's no hardcore graphic gore or gratuitous nudity present to alleviate the numbing severity of the stupefying boredom. Robert Guerrier's polished cinematography makes this film look better than it deserves and Robson shows sporadic traces of style and flair, but overall this clunker proves to be duller than an old used butter knife. If you haven't seen this yawner, then you ain't missing a thing.

Don't tackle a subject or genre such as this with no budget...a valiant effort maybe, but to expect people to watch it? Nah. Would love to know how many drafts the script went through...my guess is none, its shocking. But the director DOES have a pretty good (if very slow) eye, and my guess is some of the actors sensed a weak story and over acted in a bid to compensate. It is VERY difficult to make a convincing horror when you have absolutely no funds to pull it off. Mike Watt does, but he doesn't take himself, or his movies, too seriously, and thats why people love him. As a result, the make ups are lousy, the script is SUPER lousy, and you can tell they had no choice but to cop out of some key scenes which would have made the movie a lot better. I agree with one reviewer, Ashlie Clark is beautiful,can scream her ass off, and is the ONLY reason I give it as much as three stars.

*sigh* I was really disappointed with this movie. Too many sub-plots and not enough movement on the main plot. I thought this was a movie about a girl who inherited a house, not a zombie, religious fanaticism, slasher/romance... the list of sub plots goes on. It never really goes anywhere. As for the acting, pretty sad someone actually put a camera on the actors. I thought facial expression is supposed to be used while you recite lines. And you can't forget the token dumb stoner... how cliché to have one in a cheesy horror movie. Please don't rent this movie. Not only are you out of nearly two hours of your life, but you are out of your money. I will never get the time spent on this movie back, it's totally wasted, never to return again.

With all due respect to zootie's comments I actually found a bit more positive in this movie. Perhaps it's because I've come off a recent run of really bad ones so by comparison this seemed much better than it really was..who knows. But it wasn't like it was putting me to sleep or anything...and truthfully I found the performances of Ashlie Clark (very nice looking!) and Brandon Michael to be palatable...certainly a notch above the rest of the cast. I do agree with zootie's estimation of the photography and production values...far superior to a lot of the "financially challenged" (politically correct term for low budget) horror flicks I've seen. With 2 fairly attractive females in the cast I was somewhat surprised that this film didn't take the usual "let's toss in some gratuitous nudity so more people will watch it" but I'm actually glad they didn't. Yes, the story tends to stumble over itself and the ending lacks a payoff but on the other hand I admire what the filmmakers tried to achieve and how they went about it. I assure you that although is not a great film, it is better than a lot of the other crap being released that I've had the misfortune of seeing.