1 gibble out of 5

Director: Phedon Papamichael

‘From Within’ is one of those horror movies that falls flat on its face at some point and just never recovers.  It didn’t even have a far distance to fall: while the setup is adequate enough for After Dark horror fare, there’s something overly plodding and silly from the outset that makes it difficult to build any tension.

Unlike the mounting tension you feel whilst awaiting my reviews, yes?  Yes.  Me too.  I get excited while writing them, even.  I tape them above my bed and whisper sweet nothings to them while they sleep.

So we start with a sassed up Rumer Willis and some doofy boy hanging out in a graveyard or something and reading poetry.  Then he says something ominous and shoots himself.  Cool.  And look, director Papamichael – that scene?  Not bad.  I nodded at the application of one of the Willis clan, and the shooting was paced well enough.   Okay.  Then after some credits (I think, the film’s already fading from memory…) Willis is running down the street, looking back over her shoulder at something.  There’s part of your problem.  Movies that start with a running sequence – fine.  You have a few directions there – keep up the pace for the remainder of the movie, or use that as your bang opening and then slow it down, or even play down the whole running aspect with a monotone voiceover or something.  Boom bam, I just wrote three movie openings, all aces and worthy of like nineteen Oscars each.  ‘From Within,’ though, starts with a different bang, then goes to a running sequence, then slows down.  The pacing’s all off.  Instead of exploring some suicide aftermath, we jump right to our next victim.  For Willis gets to where she’s going, then people leave her alone in a room, which is what you do with people who run to you for help and say someone’s chasing them, and then she screams and whoops, she committed ‘suicide’ by jamming scissors into her neck.

Rinse and repeat for the rest of the movie: unexciting chase sequences that end in unexciting deaths that are then labeled   ‘suicides.’  Sure.  A rash of mysterious suicides in a town: interesting setting.  A rash of poorly staged suicides that the viewer is shown aren’t actually suicides?  Meh.

So some other people get involved, including a less Ellen-Pagey-sounding Ellen-Pagey-looking lass (Elizabeth Rice), and then Thomas Dekker is skinny and wiccany and explains some deus ex machina’s that are really disappointing excuses for what’s going on.  Also featured are some religious zealots who aren’t really exploited enough to feel threatening except that they carry guns.

There are some good things poking around in the movie.  The initial character introductions are done okay.  They don’t come across as a heavy-handed “look at him, now look at her, now look at them” method that most movies in this vein use.  And, conceptually, the explanation for why these ‘appear’ to be suicides is interesting.  It’s just all been tossed in a washer of Average and then diluted with predictable edits and music and no real point of view to rally with.

Insert some joke about the lack of talent ‘from within’.

"I just wanted to say good job on making the transition to film."

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