Intensity 🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Written and Directed by Paul Boyd
Repeat after me: Nothing good comes from conducting a séance! In Scared to Death (2024), a horror film crew conducts field research by invoking a séance in an abandoned orphanage with a sordid past. Bad idea! This breezy fun film is full of familiar seance tropes and charming characters. Though it doesn’t introduce anything groundbreaking to the genre, it is solid entertainment from front to back. Scared to Death had its world premiere at Popcorn Frights Film Festival in Fort Lauderdale.
Scared to Death proposes using a séance as preparation for their movie, which is using a séance as its central theme. Let’s give this thing a try first. It’s method homework. See how it goes! What could possibly go wrong? Five orphans who died of fright? Nothing but happy thoughts, for sure.
The Cast:
- Lin Shaye plays Maxine “Max” Wolf, the abusive and tyrannical director of “Dead House”.
- Bill Moseley plays Felix Crust, a medium from a long line of mediums. He’s a big fan of The Grog.
- Olivier Paris plays Jasper, an ambitious young production assistant who scouts an abandoned orphanage to earn favor from Max, where he believes they can conduct a seance at the location.
- Victoria Konefal plays Lena Cooper, the star of “Dead House” and this is her first horror movie.
- Kurt Deimer plays Gregory “The Grog” Grogstone, a veteran action/horror star, and is the monster in “Dead House”. His gruff exterior belies an empathic personality.
- B.J. Minor plays Johnny Fizz, a flamboyant young actor who will play Chuck, the love interest in “Dead House”.
- Jade Chenoweth plays Champ, a grip for “Dead House”. She’s a stoner girl with a crush on Jasper. She is also an undercover effects and A/V assistant to Felix.
- Rae Dawn Chong plays Ruth, the producer for “Dead House.”
A BRIEF SUMMARY OF SCARED TO DEATH : (skip to avoid minor spoilers)
Jasper goes on a location-scouting expedition for Ruth, at an abandoned orphanage built on top of a beggar’s cemetery. There he meets Felix, who in addition to being a medium, is rents out old houses for movie shoots. Five children died of fright in the house, and it has been abandoned for seventy years. Is this place haunted? OF COURSE IT IS. Since Dead House is about a séance, this place would be a perfect location to let Felix show off his summoning skills.
When Jasper arrives on the movie set, his efforts and suggestions for the seance are initially rejected by Max. But, when Lena, the star of the show, requests an actual seance to get her ready for the film, Max claims Jasper’s idea as her own and announces that they will perform a séance at The Stern Orphanage… Home of Helpless Children. Fun! Jasper is incensed, but is placated by being allowed to direct the behind the scenes footage at the seance.
Max and Champ are preparing the old house with cameras, speakers, and effects to “enhance” the effects. Soon Jasper, Max, Johnny, Lena, and the Grog arrive to start the event. The crew performs a circle of trust to start the ceremony, and immediately Max channels visions of the dead children and freaks out. She soon comes to her senses but has no memory of her visions, though the rest of the participants are highly disturbed by her rantings and spasms. After Lena and Max take a short break to hit some lines of cocaine, Max is lured into the attic by the ghosts of the orphans, and is possessed. Hey? Where’s Max?
Jasper finds Max in the attic in a twisted and grotesque state, near death. When they try and call for an ambulance… no cell signal. (Naturally) The orphanage has trapped them, with the doors locked and windows boarded. Adding to the trauma, the actors discover that Max is a (partial) fraud. As malevolent spirits closing in, the crew needs to take another crack at the seance to discover a way out.
You only see ghosts if you believe in them. It’s the brain that sees, not the eyes.”
Jasper (Olivier Paris)
AN EVALUATION OF SCARED TO DEATH:
Yes, it’s a familiar story. The backstory of the ghosts and the procedures of the séance… we have seen it before. But, it’s still a lot of fun. The script has its moments, as there are some fun bits of dialogue, but it is the ensemble that carries the day for Scared to Death. The movie allows the characters to marinate. Though the characters are broad stroke types, the cast embodies them to a tee. You care about this cast. Eric’s rule #1 for horror movies. Do I care about the protagonists? YES.
Though he isn’t first on the call sheet, this is Jasper’s story, and Olivier Paris impresses in his first feature film. This is a role which could have come off as either bland or cloying, but his ambitious eagerness feels earned. I am thankful that they didn’t make this movie a found footage film, given that Jasper does spend a significant chunk of the movie carrying a hand held camera while he does the behind the scenes footage.
It goes without saying that Lin Shaye and Bill Moseley are gifts from the horror gods. Moseley plays against type, as a largely benign huckster. It’s a great turn from an actor who often plays completely despicable characters. Shaye completely chews through her scenes. She switches from being a bitchy harridan to a wistful wanna-be mom to a spasmatic ghoul. I wonder if her contorted faces were her own, or puppetry… probably a little bit of both.
The plot is consistently engaging, but not without some significant blind spots. The story returns to the seance perhaps one time too many. Also, the logistical gaps of not utilizing Champ to get help defies logic. The gig was up. Call for help! Forgiving these oversights, the ghost backstory is solid. The Amos head is a terrific gag.
CONCLUSION
Though he doesn’t push the envelope, Paul Boyd has delivered a very good looking film. The orphanage isn’t as dilapidated as you would expect for a ghost plagued manor, (it’s a bit tidy for that), but it is an evocative location.
There is an old adage that Hollywood likes creating stories about the art of making movies. Write and produce what you know, right? I am a big fan of movies that shoot the making of movies, knowing that in order to shoot a set of a production studio, a SECOND set of crew is shooting the “movie” crew. (I’d like to see a photo of a movie shooting a movie.) I do wonder if there is anything autobiographical about Paul Boyd’s film. Was he Jasper at one time?
Scared to Death is a solid popcorn horror movie, bolstered by revered horror veterans and solid young talent. For those of you who are somehow new to seance horror, this will be a fun treat. For the veterans of the seance genre, this will be comfort food, if this is your thing. The roster of horror films with seance themes is long and proud. Fans of Brooklyn 45, Drag Me to Hell, The Changeling, The Uninvited, Ouija: Origin of Evil, The Conjuring 2, Witchboard , and particularly Insidious (for more Lin Shaye!) will probably really enjoy this. Is it transcendant? No. (For that, see Talk to Me) But it is definitely worth a watch for the fun ensemble.
Scared to Death does not have an MPAA rating. This is a fringe PG-13 and R Rating. Drug use, multipe F-bombs, and some grotesque imagery and light gore make this a tough watch for children, but teens should be OK. Scared to Death just started its festival run at Popcorn Frights.
Review by Eric Li
