Cult

The Details:
Directed by: Joe Knee
Country: USA
Language: English
Color: Color
Label: Creep FX, Maverick Platinum
Street Date: 03/06/2007

The Review:
I've been interested in the occult since my freshman year of high school. I find the entire mentality to be both incredibly fascinating and truly frightening. Therefore, it seems that occult themed horror flicks would be right up my alley, eh? Unfortunately, this is not the case. Every movie on the subject I've seen has turned out to be abrasively average, and sadly Joe Knee's "Cult" is no different.

A group of pretty-faced college kids convince their professor to let them research a mysterious, now-defunct cult for one of their classes. They discover that the origin of the cult's extreme power came from an ancient Chinese amulet, which the geek in me is going to lovingly refer to as the +5 Jade Amulet of Sacrifice.

A young woman named Kwan Yin once wore the amulet until she was murdered by her father for becoming illegitimately pregnant. While she was dying she supposedly conducted a prayer of some sort that enchanted the amulet with its evilness. The amulet eventually winds up in the hands of the students, and suddenly people begin committing "suicide" left and right.


As an attempt to add a sub-plot, Mindy, played by the incredibly attractive and talented Rachel Miner ('Bully' & 'The Black Dahlia') back stabs her fellow group members into continuing the research despite the increasing body count, leading to all sorts of drama. However, this becomes more of an annoyance than anything else. While the acting is definitely above average, I actually had to tell myself that I wasn't watching a clip from an old episode of Beverly Hills: 90210.

If you're hoping for sweet death scenes or gore, you're not going to get it here. Everyone in the movie dies nearly the exact same way. Sure, this is part of the whole aura of what cults are all about, but this is a mystery film...please give us some mystery! Also, "Cult" suffers from the eye-rolling, cliché, MTV style editing that darfnader and I both despise. There can't be a single drop of blood on the screen without the camera going into a shaky, intense handheld shot with lots of "WOOOSSHH!" sound effects spliced in with the fast cutting. Maybe I'm a traditionalist, but I feel like simplicity has been lost, minus a few select films here and there (Dementia for example). It's a shame that even second rate horror movies such as this have to be hip and flashy nowadays.

Structurally, "Cult" progressively goes downhill unlike any film I've ever seen. Here is a little chart I whipped up to demonstrate:



As you can see, the movie actually starts off very strong, with a great attention grabber, some nice exposition, a few foxy girls in robes and an EXCELLENT score by Thanh Tran. But with every passing scene the movie becomes more and more forgettable. Imagine the feeling of purchasing a nicely ripe banana, just waiting for you to eat...but it's summer time in a post global-warming society and by the time you're to the last bite it's already rotten and slimy. That, in a nutshell, is "Cult."

Despite its shortcomings, the movie did give me several decent laughs which will elevate it to midrange review level. I'll leave you with a few quotes that made my night:

"Fuck this Scooby Doo BULLSHIT!" -Alex
"..........Fuckin' Tweaker." - Random Dude in reference to Mindy
"Get your fuckin' ass up and take me to the holy books." -Bailey

Thank you, good night, and "don't drink the Kool-Aid" (ba-dum-chissshh).



LAUGHS: See the quotes above!
CAST: Good acting...too bad the movie is poor.
SCORE: Thanh Tran did a great job!