Shallow Nutshell

What is it with the horror genre? For every skillfully-made, intelligent horror flick that manages to get made, there are countless hordes of direct-market crap like this. Ok, to be fair, it starts with a promising concept: A teenaged boy, naked and covered head-to-toe in human blood, walks dazed into a police station and won't say a word. But what could go right a dozen ways goes dead wrong as the film's witless cast of imbeciles stumbles their way through a case even that moron Kate Hudson played in The Skeleton Key could have figured out in five minutes, supernatural twists and all. Honestly, it's not even the prevalent stupidity that bothers me most; it's the bombastic musical soundtrack by Steve London, which underscores every flinch and glance with thunderous chords and screeching violins, as if he can make the movie scary by sheer force of will alone. The film itself is more supernaturally evil than any ghost or ghoul it conjures.

"Consistency is the last resort of the unimaginative."
-Oscar Wilde