Pray for Morning (2006) User Reviews

A good effort but lacking in areas

[ApolloBoy109 · 5/10 · 11 September 2008]

An essay in horror

Those who love horror films will recognize this formula, a group of H.S. kids camp out in a haunted . . . fill in the blank here.

To begin with there were too many kids. Six would have been enough. The first hour runs the familiar course A) Background of said location, B) Intro of the kids and their dynamics c) Realization that something is not right and finally d) first deaths. All fine and good.

The bad: Never saw a window, never saw the kids attempt to escape after the first deaths. They spend too much time wandering halls looking for the rooms. It took too long to put a face to the green light, and expound on the reason for the haunting. In fact, the movie moved too slowly for my liking. The inner jealousy between Jesse, Dylan and Ashley was unnecessary. With the exception of Jesse, no one really had a personality unless Slut girl, Jealous boy, Stud boy, Nerd boy and Magic girl is enough for you. This last character (the girl whose brother was killed twenty years prior) should have shared her information long before entering the haunted locale. For gosh sakes, there is no good reason why she wouldn't. Furthermore as the story progressed she reveals even more (when the time is right) Why? And finally, the last half hour was populated by too many characters and their POV of what happened a 100 years ago. The ending was too rushed to explain a rather complicated plot. I don't even know how they vanquished the villain or how it related to the story.

Never answered: Why did the villain do what he did in the first place?? What did they villain want anyway. Presumably to come 'back to life'.

The good: Very haunting. The time flashes or separation of the cast via magic was cool. Loved that Jesse was a reincarnation of a person who was murdered in the original investigation. The discovery of the hands. The concept of the straight arrow hotel detective dabbling in magic to dispatch the villain. (Heck how he did it would have made a better movie) The curse aspect. The hotel itself was very frightening.

How it should have went down: Removing the two nerd boys and getting to the curse sooner would have helped. Introducing the villain sooner and diving into Jesse's past midway through the film would have lend credence to the proceedings. The fact that Jesse reveals at the end that he knew all along who he had been in a past life p*ssed me off!! So why didn't you share that info with your buddies, would have saved some lives, dude! Editing would have helped.

I have written all of this because I didn't hate the film, I only wanted it to be better. So I say, IT'S WORTH A LOOK for die hard adult horror fans.

The acting was fine, the direction, inspiring at times and the story idea was good.

My Review

[joemamaohio · 5/10 · 19 July 2008]

Eight friends decide to go to an abandoned hotel that is supposedly haunted after the brutal murders of five teenagers back in 1985. As soon as they enter the hotel, weird events begin to happen, and they start disappearing after seeing a mysterious light.

The mystery unravels as the remaining survivors realize that they're trapped in the hotel, and every time they try to leave, they're transported back to where they started from. What is keeping them there, and why does it want them dead? I wasn't expecting much going into this film, so maybe that's why I was so surprised by how much I enjoyed it. It's not your 'typical' haunted house story, and there's more to it than meets the eye. The friends are more than just mere eye candy who have no clue what's going on...they actually solve the riddle of the hotel and know how to stop the curse of it, but all they have to do is survive to achieve that goal. I found it to be a fresh idea given to an overdone theme.

Pray for Morning: Starts strong, spirals out of control quickly

[Platypuschow · 3/10 · 27 December 2017]

This under the radar indie horror wasn't cheap to make, standing at over 2 million dollars Pray for Morning looks a lot better than it's shoddily made cover art and stars horror legend Udo Kier.

It tells the story of a right of passage for youngsters to spend a night in an abandoned hotel, but the latest batch are in for the night of their lives as they find themselves getting picked off one by one.

Though not an original concept the delivery is, this isn't your standard slasher or ghosty flick it's something altogether different and has character.

Sadly the execution is lacking and the film is just plain messy, with an unlikeable cast, confused plot and mediocre delivery this should by all rights have been better.

It has it's moments but they are too few and far between, so though it starts promisingly enough it spirals out of control and faceplants hard.

The Good:

Promising start

Deaths are pretty brutal

The Bad:

Highly amateurish cover art

Poorly made

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Udo Kier is overdue a lifetime achievement award

The horror genre needs more bone crunching

Overrated

[newyorksabre · 1/10 · 3 August 2008]

I personally thought that I would be in for a pleasant surprise but low and behold I was mistaken. I don't have any preconceptions about B movies I like to watch all kinds of quality work. This movie however, was not fun to watch. The plot is OK, it isn't written especially well but it's not that hard to listen to. The acting on the other hand was dreadful. I mean painful to watch. It wasn't the horror that had me cringing in my seat, it was the acting. I was looking for a hopeful for a glimpse of an up and coming actor in this movie, surely you won't find any one of the actors in upcoming A movies. They might be seen in one of those late night infomercials instead.

For this one I say Thanks but No Thanks.

It's OK. I've seen worse.

[fonfixer · 4/10 · 24 July 2008]

The story behind the movie is good, although some of the special effects could be better. The acting is better than anything I could do but, its not Bruce Willis or Whoopi Goldberg quality. Some points in the story just aren't that believable. Who would ever think that power would still be connected to an old abandoned hotel, yet they try the breakers and presto, they have lights!! It must be so easy to maintain an indoor pool, after so many years the water is clear and the pool is still full to boot, I have a hard enough time keeping mine clean on a weekly basis!! And the knife at end, what are the odds you would find one just when you need one?

If you can over look all these little things and others like them then its a watchable flick. If you're going to watch this movie with someone who constantly points things like this out, don't. You're better off watching this movie without them.

An unbearable cinematic underachievement.

[psychonoir89 · 1/10 · 9 August 2008]

What we call in Spanish NACA! AKA stupid vulgar and cheap. NACA! the acting is stupid. the plot is pointless. the cinematography was almost vomit inducing. the title is cheesy and unoriginal. the editing was disastrous, the lighting was completely reprehensible. the pace was slow. the set looked like the tower of terror at Walt Disney world. (disny's tower of terror was more frightening than this). The opening credits were that of a cheap porn film after-party. Bottomline is that for someone who is studying film (and even those who are not) This movie is a complete waste of time and money. one out of ten stars. I would truly give zero if I could.

Pray For Morning

[a_baron · 2/10 · 17 February 2016]

This is a theme that has been done to death. Talking of death, although it will most certainly not frighten you to death, it may well bore you to death. A group of students or student types enter a haunted house for a dare, out of curiosity or necessity, and strange things happen, then spend the next hour walking around in the semi-dark. How thrilling. No, not exactly. Yes, you guessed it, somebody or more likely something is killing them, starting with the resident nymphomaniac and her boyfriend in the middle of a session. What a way to go.

There are ghosts, some are or appear to be malevolent. Others...Seriously, if you can sit through this one in a single session without taking a break to watch something genuinely interesting - like watching paint dry - well, you're braindead if not dead already. True, there are a few special effects, but they are not very special. In the last third of the film we get to see what or who is behind the nightmare, a magician who has crossed over to the other side. There is something about a mysterious book, and as this guy is a murderer, why not resurrect the original detective on the case? Yeah, seriously, and at the end they all live happily ever after. Those who survive.

Stare at a blank wall instead

[pausebreak · 3/10 · 13 August 2008]

I never thought I'd feel so robbed of time.

I rarely see really bad movies... because no matter how bad a movie is, I always try to overlook the flaws and focus on the merits instead, then it becomes a not so bad movie. And I do that to convince my wife that I didn't waste her time making her watch the movies that I like her to watch with me.

But on this one, I failed.

Actually, it was my wife who tried to help herself enjoy the film, while most I could do was delay my judgment and not ruin it for her. Throughout the movie all that I could think of was hitting the eject button. In the end, the only thing positive with the experience was that we both enjoyed hating the film.

We hated it that when a character, inside a haunted building, sees a kid with blood trickling down his forehead, extends his arm to the kid and says "It's okay!" instead of running like hell. I know, people in horror movies are supposed to do stupid things, that's the way it is, but this one is just way too dumb!

We hated it that the characters get teleported during climactic scenes, but never beyond it. They didn't even have problems searching for the clues in every nook and cranny of the hotel.

We hated it that there was so much detective work done you'd think they're with Scoobie Doo. Seriously.

We hated the clichés of stumbling on the floor while running, rivals fighting over a girl at a really bad time, and a teen couple leaving all the others to have sex while inside a ghost-inhabited hotel. Clichés are forgivable, but clichés that are badly used and looked just plastered on the script is a crime.

The monster in this movie, or the element that's supposed to make this scary, is lame, funny at best. The title, while interesting, turned out to be irrelevant to the story. The actors' acting, while not in a drama, can make you cry. Save for the camera, it's really easy to mistake this for a high school project.

To each his own, but Pray For Morning for us turned out to be Pray For The Ending.

3 out of 10. Is it that bad? Yes. But I'm not giving it the lowest because there were still some elements that could've been worse.

Recommend to someone that loves B list movies.

[chibikarik · 7/10 · 15 February 2009]

I was actually pleasantly surprised by this movie. That may be because I'm a major fan of B horror movies, mostly because I like to laugh at them...but this one I actually found I was enjoying it. I have to admit the acting was a little sub-par for many of the characters and a lot of the plot was cliché and directly from some A list horror, but really nothing is new anymore so I didn't mind that too much. The plot was pretty good...the characters...could have been developed better, and some just seemed pathetic. But it is horror and they still were a bit entertaining. What bothered me the most was the special effects, of course it was low budget, but come on...the lighting seemed like sunlight shining on a pool. Other than that I thought it was highly entertaining. Just ignore the actors' looks of "horror" which look more like surprise and trying not to laugh. Oh and ignore the horrible title. Other than that, if you enjoy and I mean enjoy B list movies I think you'll be surprised.

Way too serious for what it is

[pushfrog_2000 · 2/10 · 22 July 2010]

Pretentious is the word I'd use to describe this movie. The director went "to pains" for many of his special effects and prop pieces which were mediocre at best. The actors were terrible, and their characters severely underdeveloped. The pacing of the movie was also sluggish, as the majority of the kills were children twitching with blue light shining over them. They didn't reveal the ghost until too late in the movie, where you stopped caring.

I was most disappointed by the fact that these teenagers appeared to be stupid from their dialogue, but were still able to solve plot points. They were intelligent enough to figure out the curse and puzzle; to figure out from a twenty-year-old bloodstain that the victim was trying to hide something; they could speak Latin, translate "hobo symbols" on the walls, and use old photographs as maps. Yet they died because they separated unnecessarily from the group and then just stood in the same place for extended periods of time. No I'm not talking about the ghosts telekinesis when he held them in place, I'm speaking namely about the character Topher, who stayed behind to cry while his friends didn't notice his absence until the ghost descended upon him. It was extremely artificial, and not in the least bit suspenseful.

There are good points to the movie, as the characters seemed to genuinely enjoy each other's presence (save the obligatory fighting couple), which is a dynamic most movies miss on. There were a few good actors in the mix, even though they weren't playing with their best cards. And the story, if re-edited by a different company, could be genuinely interesting.

It also had a beautiful and creepy soundtrack, and sometimes (note, sometimes) had the perfect atmosphere for a higher quality horror movie.

Fine horror

[tobypang9394 · 8/10 · 25 July 2008]

this film didn't have any well-known actors in it, apparently it's a small budget film, but the actors' performance are excellent, especially Jonathon Trent's cast, he perfectly showed the courage and the fearlessness of the young character.

The story starts a few graduated kids went to a abandoned hotel where mysterious murder took place, and then found themselves in danger from "someone" in the hotel.

The entire plot of the haunting house story is carefully planned, signs appeared one by one, giving a new hint to the killer of those bone-twisted victims, while creating another mystery, first the "this place is not safe" sign, and then those hands. It wasn't easy to guess what these things means actually as the story is just an ordinary haunted house story.

The death of the first few friends are quite surprising, they 're not killed each time they got teleported by the ghost, sometimes one survived, sometimes one killed, after their friends were killed hopelessly, Jesse were invited to see the killer ghost, then, the whole atmosphere turned and they started to revenge.

A major weakness of this film is that the surprising ending is not clear enough, they director didn't make it clear how Jesse remembered his previous life in the hotel, i couldn't figure it out until i watched some scenes again, it was that when the old women touched him and showed him how she died, she showed him who he was as well, and at the ending, there wasn't any link back to this hint. But one thing i still not sure, how did Jesse bring back his boss to finish the job? Isn't that the curse was solely to trap the ghost and nothing else?

OK but not as good as IMDb rating!

[shujaahmad2004 · 6/10 · 20 July 2008]

I watched this movie after having seen it gain a rating of 8 on IMDb. I thought this must be a good horror movie to attain such a high rating (even though there had only been 44 votes at the time). After watching it i can say i am a little disappointed in the movie. Seemed like a low budget movie with poor actors & a fairly simple plot & thats exactly what you get! I thought it was a good enough watch & kept me reasonably interested but the fact that the source of all evil in the hotel turns out to be a stand-up show magician seemed to ruin the whole thing for me. Still watchable but not sure how it gets an 8.0 rating (at the time of writing this comment).

Supernatural teen haunted house horror.

[poolandrews · 3/10 · 21 February 2009]

Pray for Morning starts as a few teen friends decide to spend the night in the Royal Crescent Hotel, a large rundown long abandoned hotel that was the scene of five gruesome murders back in 1984. Jesse (Jonathon Trent) has always been interested in the hotel & drawn to the mystery surrounding the still unsolved murders, he has convinced some of his high school mates to accompany him, during the middle of the night of course because going there during the day when it was light would just be silly. Once there they decide to check out the rooms in which the five bodies were found, before anyone know's it an evil ghostly spirit has been awakened & is killing the teens off one-by-one & unless they can stop it none of them will live to see the morning...

Written & directed by Cartney Wearn I watched Pray for Morning last night without knowing a thing about it, the title is rather vague & could have referred to anything so I didn't go into it with any great expectation yet I still found myself disappointed & not particularly having a good time. What we have here is a cross between The Shining (1980) with it's hotel style setting & The Amityville Horror (1979) with the now standard haunted house scenario (spooky property has a dark past, you know the sort of thing) along with a few boring mystery elements thrown in there for good measure. The film spends far too much time showing annoying American teens wondering around this old hotel in the dark, it just doesn't make for particularly entertaining viewing & gets very boring very quickly. The script is predictable & is nothing more than a teen slasher with some tenuous supernatural elements along with an obligatory twist ending which didn't do much for me at all to be honest as I thought it was pretty ineffectual. There is one amazing scene I just couldn't work out, in it one of the annoying American high school teens examines a twenty year old blood stain & determines that whoever left the stain was trying to hide something! How on Earth do you work that out? Also it turns out that whatever the victim was trying to hide they hid inside an nearby air vent so when they were killed how could they have been trying to hide something when they had clearly already hidden it? Also why didn't the police find that severed hand in the vent only a few feet away? According to earlier exposition the police had 'torn the place apart' looking for clues so why not find that severed hand only a few feet away from a murder victim? The police obviously didn't do a very good job, did they? There's no explanation as to how or why there's a ghost in the hotel or how it manages to alter reality or how it can transport people back in time &, of course, the annoying American teens mobile phones don't work for no apparent reason either so they get isolated from the outside world in a now obligatory plot device for low budget horror films. The story doesn't engage or entertain, that character's are both poor & annoying, the plot is forgettable & not that much actually happens.

The hotel sets or locations (not sure if they filmed in a real hotel or in a studio) are quite nice but why are some of the lights on? Wouldn't the electricity have been turned off? Horror wise there's not much to get excited about here, there's a few bloody corpses & what looks like a bamboo stick stuck through someone but not much else & there's not much in the way of scares since the less than impressive CGI computer effects have the opposite effect & make things almost laughable. There are one or two bits with a decent atmosphere but it's never sustained for any period of time. The film seems to take itself very seriously & there's no humour or fun to be seen anywhere which doesn't help when the plot feels so stale & lethargic. To give it some credit there are a few period flashbacks at the end which are quite nicely done I suppose.

With a supposed budget of about $2,000,000 this has better production values than a lot of recent low budget horror but that's hardly any sort of recommendation on it's own. Filmed in Los Angeles. The only real cast member of note is cult German born actor Udo Kier who doesn't look interested at all & to my eyes seems to put on more weight in every subsequent film he makes (the Steven Seagal of the low budget horror world!).

Pray for Morning is a dull supernatural teen horror slasher that doesn't satisfy on any level really, never mind pray for morning I would suggest that most audiences will be praying for it to finish not too long after it has started.

Just for the entertainment

[nakts3 · 7/10 · 24 June 2017]

The most cliché group of teenagers decide to ditch their graduation party to spend a night in an abandoned and haunted hotel as a way of marking end of their youth, friendships etc.

When I started watching this, I was ready for the usual sloppy horror movie, with terrible acting, terrible plot choices and, well, basically the usual stuff that all horror fans are already used to by this point. Although I have to say, that "Pray for Morning" did contain all of the previously mentioned things, it was also surprisingly entertaining.

Nifty supernatural horror outing

[Woodyanders · 8/10 · 3 December 2019]

A group of high school students decide to spend the night in old abandoned resort hotel. Back in 1984 five kids were murdered in said hotel. Naturally, the place turns out to be haunted.

Writer/director Cartney Wearn relates the enjoyable and engrossing story at a steady pace, takes time to develop the characters, ably crafts a spooky gloom-doom atmosphere, makes neat use of the rundown sprawling hotel main location, and tosses in a few nice bits of gore for good measure. Moreover, Wearn deserves extra praise for playing the premise refreshingly straight and sincere, with zero cheesy fake jump scares or annoying moments of unnecessary humor.

The solid acting by the capable cast rates as another substantial asset: Jonathan Trent as smooth dude Jesse, Jessica Stroup as the sweet and radiant Ashley, Dennis Flanagan as belligerent toolbag Dylan, Ashlee Turner as the forlorn Lilly, Jackson Rathbone as the nerdy Connor, Brandon Novitsky as the gawky Topher, Kip Martin as jerky horndog Rand, and Rachel Veltri as shameless strumpet Bunny. In addition, there are cool roles for seasoned veterans Udo Kier as sinister magician Edouard Leopold Edu and Robert F. Lyons as no-nonsense security chief Proctor. Both Patrice Lucien Cochet's shadowy cinematography and Vincent Gillioz's shivery score are up to par. Only the chintzy (not so) special effects leave something to be desired. Worth a watch.

Very fun, but flawed

[takoyakipower · 8/10 · 24 May 2009]

I'm a huge fan of horror movies, and this one did a lot right, though some things they messed up.

They were right in casting more or less unknowns for the kids. A common mistake in horror movies is that they'll cast stars as the younguns. A, everyone knows that they aren't actually 18. B, No one can watch the movie without thinking of them as stars. There are rare actors that can disguise themselves in their character, but for the most part it's a bad idea to stick them in a horror. It makes it less believable, and therefore less scary. So well done.

The bad part was the half-formulaic setup. There WERE plot twists, which is nice, but they messed up. In horror movies, either they stick with the formula, or they do something completely different. In Pray for Morning, they worked in limbo. They stuck to the formula in that the kids who were all about the sex were instantly killed- during the act. This is the puritanical nonsense that moviegoers have lived with for forever. So why? Why kill the sexed first? Then they killed the innocent. NEVER kill the innocent. THAT is non-formula. The innocent should be the last to die, and that's ONLY if there's two. You never kill BOTH if there's more than one. That's bad form.

They should have put a story to the light earlier, and shown something other than that the people were standing stalk-still screaming. Also, the kids should've put all the cards on the table from the beginning.

With so many criticisms, you'd think I'd hated it. But in reality it was a great show. The creepy brownish light and the ghosts' random appearances were well done, and the actors did a good job. It was gore-y, ugly, and fun.

A different kind of horror movie

[jjkjsk8685 · 10/10 · 28 April 2011]

When this movie first started I thought...Oh No another teen slasher flick! It's about these teens on there graduation night they go to this hotel that is supposed to be haunted. They are gonna stay the night, and go to the individual rooms where these kids from the 80's were murdered.

It starts off kinda slow, but really picks up by the middle. What I thought about the movie totally changed, It has twists and turns you really don't know what's going on until the end.

This movie was not your typical cookie cutter horror movie. I think you should definitely pick this up.