The Scorned [2005] - AlexDirector:
Robert Kubilos Starring:
Jenna Lewis Trishelle Cannatella Jonny Fairplay Country: USA
I really want to know who thought this would be a good idea. I mean reality star gatherings isn't a new concept, and have been done before to give an additional 15 minutes of fame to otherwise ordinary people. However this time, they were pulled together for a fictional thriller. At first I thought it was a movie about a reality show where each member would start dying. But then I found out it had nothing to do with a show and just cast people from Survivor, Apprentice, Bachelor and other horrible programs. Since I was cleaning out my rental store's DVD liquidation sale and purposely search for the worst movies, I in essence, still won. But I suppose still lost in some regards too.
It plays out like a soap opera only without 50 concurrent storylines and the addition of ghosts and death and naughty bits. We start out with a women about to be married. She is working on a TV show, and her husband to be on a movie. She missed his stupid little premiere to work a late shift on her series, so he's a bit angry. Push comes to shove and she's now dead in the hot tub from a fire poker. Was it the husband to be, or her roommate friend. Do we know? Do we care? No.
Flash forward into the future where the mood changes from Skinemax thriller to Beverly Hills. A different set of people move into the house and split the rent. One guy likes to party, the others have to remain serious about their future careers as commercial actors. But amidst the craziness spooky things start to happen like disembodies eyes, mild cases of possession, and vomit. The last one was just from the partiers though. After a random girl is swallowed by the Earth, we know this is a serious matter. And only hard detective work like talking to the landlord will crack the case.
Slowly anyone who's a cheater starts to die in amusing fashions. In other words, the whole cast. We also start seeing the ghost, but come to the realization that it's more of a spirit since the women is still technically alive in a hospital. Through some confessions and flashbacks, we end up with two stories about what really happened. One from the husband, and the other from the roommate. However neither really is made clear to be the accurate one, so we just take that as it comes.
Etc. Etc. more stuff happens and then it ends at some point. The acting is okay. I think more because the people act their whole lives while off camera, so it's natural. The deaths were amusing too. The lava lamp that somehow explodes and not only burns a couple but completely chars them to skeletons was my favorite. I think this whole mess was worth that one scene. But other than that, it's just an exercise in stupidity as well as seeing how many female reality stars they can get naked (hint, it's all of them). For some reason I wasn't bored though, and that's my sole metric for determining a truly bad movie, so at least it has something going for it.
Tags:
Ghosts
Horror
Shot on Video