Episode 50

                                         

                                                                     

Anyone who knows me can tell you I am not a fan of found footage films. Apart from the original Blair Witch Project, The Poughkeepsie Tapes, Grave Encounters and one or two others I find them a waste of time and effort. Cliches, headache inducing camera work and an ending you know before you hit play all combine to make the genre a tough sell for me.

So when I picked up Episode 50 in a pack of 4 films for $5 I wasn't very hopeful, but the back cover offered up an interesting twist on the cliched premise of skeptical ghost hunters finding actual ghosts. This time around the skeptics are forced to work with another team, this one being evangelical Christians who see God and Satan in every strange occurrence. This led me to hope it would have a bit more depth than most similar films with some actual debate between the two teams about science, parapsychology and faith. Sadly there's just cliches and hyperbole, much of it sounding like Christian propaganda.

There's also multiple problems with the film itself, its supposed to be the footage shot by these two crews but much of it could obviously not have been shot by them. This hands throughout the film and keeps pulling the viewer out of the film. Other films have survived one or two scenes like this, but they've been much better films and it's not until afterward that you realize what has happened. Episode 50 is so dull you notice it right away.

Also after all the build up about how haunted the asylum is, the climax takes place in an entirely different location, basically negating everything that was said before. I just deflates any atmosphere or tension that the film has managed to build up. And the climax is so damn awful, it has the worst portal of hell ever put on film, it makes the one from 1977's The Evil look good.

So basicly we have a film that is a collection of cliches and plot devices from other films, (even the reason they're there has been stolen from The Legend of Hell House), poorly redone and what few original ideas it has actually hurting things even more. A disappointment as I was hoping this would manage to rise above it's genre and deliver something at least a little different.