Rent Dead Night (2017)

64 minutes too long! - Dead Night review by F15HF1NG3RZ

One of the most tedious "horror" films I have ever watched. Through the medium of some weird, true crime psychic TV show that is powered by a plant in the middle of the woods (!!!) we find out who is killed in the first 15 minutes. It should have been kept as a short story and finished there. I love horror, but I got absolutely NOTHING from watching this hodge podge of badly acted ideas.

Complex and gory - Dead Night review by NP

I like films that are complex and difficult to follow – it makes me think the brains behind the production operate on a wider plane than mine, and it is good to be guided through a twisted narrative by such a lead. But this potentially interesting story seems to be made up of two separate films bolted together.

A family of moderately irritating people move to an isolated cabin and find an injured woman in the surrounding woods (Barbara Crampton, who in a prolific career, played Anne Sacchetti in the excellent ‘We Are Still Here.’) As is often the case, they become a lot less aggravating once dark things start occurring. On that score, the production cannot be faulted.

As we go through the events of the story, all the strange inserts make a certain amount of sense, but some remain delightfully ambiguous. The ending is a wonderfully gory mess, but doesn’t have quite the impact it would have done if we had got to know more clearly what is going on and had a better understanding of the characters. My score is 6 out of 10.