Review for Crazy Eights

(Originally posted on fight-evil.com)

I saw this movie once before many, many years ago, and there was only a single scene I remembered. In the scene, a recently blinded woman is given a stick to defend herself against what amounts to little more than a ghost.

That's a microcosm of his much sense this movie makes.

Which isn't to say that, based off the plot and some of the ideas touched upon in the movie, it didn't have potential. Crazy Eights could have been, despite it's moderately low quality, a cult classic if done right. But instead of really tying things together, what does the ending do? Gives us some nonsense scene which I couldn't make head or tails of, and based off what others online have said, I'm not at all alone.

For the most part, the movie's fine. It's not really good, and I had very little fun watching it, but for it's budget, it was somewhat well done (how's that for tepid praise?). The problem is, because the plot wasn't fully formed and there's still plenty of questions in our heads after the credits start rolling, things just feel sort of incomplete.

The cast was a mixed bag. With six main characters, we weren't over-inundated with new faces, but it did take a little bit for each of the individuals to really stand out from the crowd (and one of them never really did). Gabrielle Anwar (who, despite have about 60 credits on IMDb, hasn't really been in much of note), due to the nature of her character, seemed to be drugged out 95% of the movie. Frank Whaley may have a more impressive resume, but his character was a whiny, annoying bitch throughout all of the film.

Dan DeLuca (who appeared a bit in The Wire) never really had much to do, and ended up being one of the more inconsequential characters. Traci Lords, much like Whaley, played a pretty annoying character, and due to that, was pretty unlikable. George Newbern, who played a priest, was pretty fun overall, though pulled a potential solution to the problem out of his ass near the end. Slightly less consistent was Dina Meyer (Starship Troopers and some of the Saw flicks being her biggest works), as she sort of lost it at the end (as did the film), but she was still mostly solid.

The thing is, even the better cast members, being Newbern and Meyer, didn't make the film fun. I chuckled a bit at some of Whaley's ridiculous lines, but I felt just sort of 'there' when watching this, not at all interested in what was unraveling on the screen.

For what little gore we got, it was okay. I felt that, as multiple deaths were off-screen, we could have been thrown a bit more in that department, but apparently the creators hoped the story would stand up for itself, which was a bit of a failure on their part.

In all honesty, though I've not said many nice things about it, Crazy Eights isn't a terrible movie. It really did have a somewhat interesting idea that they just failed to realize, and they had some themes they failed to pull together when it counted. It's not a good movie, but it's not awful either. I'd give it at least one go, and maybe you'll end up liking it. For me, it had a shot, but didn't quite make the hoop. 5.5/10.