Dead and Gone (2008) User Reviews

Different, but not necessarily in a good way...

[medusa-41 · 3/10 · 30 June 2008]

Watched it on DVD without knowing anything about it, there was no plot synopsis, no rating, nor any comments on IMDb as I inserted this disc on its release date.

Early on it is clear that it is very low budget, I later learned that it was approx. $500,000. The video is of sharp quality but without Hollywoodesque professional lighting. That part might actually please some viewers.

An interesting shamble of actors show up for this one, several B celebrities from various professions who may or may not be known to you. I particularly liked the female law enforcer, mainly because of her looks; but also because of something else in her character. The acting in this film, while unimpressive, is not the problem. The main story is thin and its background story alike, but this isn't the problem either. Many aspects of this movie are found lacking, such as the dialogue, but not lacking enough to make me dislike the film. No, the problems I perceived were about pacing, logic and the lack of ever coming close to being scary. Because that is how I like my horror movies - scary. This one isn't.

I cannot recommend it to anyone in particular, but horror fans like myself will watch this regardless of warnings. So I wish you pleasant viewing. :)

Oddball horror thriller.

[poolandrews · 4/10 · 13 February 2010]

Dead and Gone is set in Desert Wells, Nevada where failed actor Jack Wade (Quentin Jones) takes his comatose wife Frankie (Kathrine Bates) to the run down cabin he won in a poker game after all of their money ran out, Jake has to care for Frankie himself after Frankie's family have cut them out of her estate leaving him penniless. There are a few other locals including pretty Ranger Kate Edison (Gillian Shure) whom he starts to have an affair with, however despite warnings that bad things happen at the cabin Jake stays & starts to experience disturbing visions of his wife Frankie up & walking around taunting him. Jake finally snaps & kills Frankie but she doesn't want to stay dead & to protect his secret he has to kill again as the visions increase & become more bizarre, then Kate finds out the truth about Jake & the pieces begin to fit the puzzle...

Directed by Yossi Sasson this is an odd little horror thriller, I got the feeling while watching Dead and Gone that the makers weren't quite sure what it wanted to be & I still feel that way. Is it a horror film? Is it a psychological thriller? Is it a dark comedy? I don't know really, I suspect it's an uncomfortable mix of all three none of which are done particular justice. The plot never really comes together, it's never really explained if what happens is down to the supernatural, to Jake cracking up under pressure, whether it's because of all the drugs Jake takes or if it was all planned & things just went awry a little. In fact it could be a mixture of all those reasons or something else entirely, who know's. There are affairs, murders, fraud, ghost's & attempted rape all taking place in or around an old cabin in the woods. I just didn't think the various subplots & narrative came together that well, it leaves you asking just as many questions as are answered by the time the end credits roll (by the way keep watching once the end credits start as they get interrupted to show Penny turn up at the cabin &, well... find out for yourself). At just over 80 minutes in length it moves along at a reasonable pace & it's something a bit different but that doesn't automatically mean it's any good. It's never explained why Jake sees a vision of his wife Frankie before he kills her yet only sees visions of the other's after he kills them & the ending is open for interpretation as it's unclear whether Kate is now under the influence of the house or not or why she deliberately killed Jake.

The film looks alright but the isolated backwoods cabin is an often used location & nothing here is particularly distinguished. The gore is lacking, there's a cut off arm, a severed hand, a decapitated head & a bit of blood but nothing else. Dead and Gone also perpetuates the horror film cliché that all rednecks have bad teeth & will have sex with anything that moves even if it's the same gender. There's one brief sex scene but there's no proper nudity on show.

With a supposed budget of about $500,000 this was low budget & for that money it looks good & has decent production values & effects. Apparently filmed in Hollywood in Los Angeles. The acting is alright, it's nothing special but it will suffice.

Dead and Gone is an odd little film that doesn't really know what it wants to be or who to appeal to, while not the worst film out there it's not brilliant by any stretch of the imagination & it just doesn't quite manage to satisfy on any level.

Just not scary, gory or in anyway original.

[StudioLAX · 3/10 · 11 July 2008]

Perhaps I shouldn't be writing a review as I had to turn off after about forty minutes due to the total lack of originality, terrible pacing, and the incredibly poor attempts to copy Japanese horror shock tactics. In addition the acting was largely terrible with the exception of the female lead who was interesting and likable both in appearance and acting style.

I couldn't decide what was more wooden, the cabin or the leading man who I was surprised to find was an experienced UK TV actor (although I'd never seen him in anything) and not a friend of the director who had never acted before. Ironically the character he played was an artist who had a shot at Hollywood stardom and blew it because he "sucked" at acting, I suspect real life will mirror art.

CGI was quite good for such a low budget film however prosthetic effects looked like body parts from shop dummies.

Despite all the negatives the visual style and lighting were particularly good as in places was the editing although the use of Matrix style speed ramping was completely out of place given the nature of the story.

As is becoming the practice with such films I suspect the other rave reviews are from people connected with the production (when will I learn not to believe them). Maybe this is why I'm being so harsh, you people have to stop doing this I simply can't believe anyone with any knowledge of modern horror could give this film a positive review.

My Review

[joemamaohio · 1/10 · 30 September 2008]

Forty years after a man kills his wife, children, and himself, Jack Wade (Quentin Jones) brings his ailing wife to the secluded cabin to kill her, because she's a famous actress and he doesn't have any money. As he spends more time there alone, he starts slipping into insanity, and soon his well thought out plan becomes his living nightmare.

Boring! Nothing new, nothing exciting, nothing original, nothing worth remembering. It's a movie you'll forget you saw 20 minutes after watching it. The only cool thing was the addition of Felissa Rose as Jack's attorney (and wannabe love interest), since she's a staple in horror movie history (see "Sleepaway Camp" and you'll know what I mean).

halsbaby2 is the writer - how can you trust him to review this?

[the_bashman · 1/10 · 7 October 2008]

This sucked, big time.

Sock puppeteering is not acceptable in art. In other words, don't toot your own horn pretending to not be associated with, and in this case, the hack-write of this piece of trash.

This film was forced, the acting dry.

Done by people who just want to build up a resume.

Why build a resume of junk? Just to have a sheet of paper to point to? Or a page on IMDb? I love B films and never take them seriously, but trying to tell people to not take it too seriously after all the bad reviews is as transparent as the plot and story.

Stick to for-the-love internet zines. That way all your buddies can pat you on the back and make you feel like you have talent.

STAY dead and REMAIN gone!

[Coventry · 2/10 · 17 April 2009]

On paper "Dead and Gone" truly sounded like an entertaining and potentially imaginative new zero-budgeted little horror flick. The basic plot description is original, the remote forestry settings are marvelous (with echoes of "The Evil Dead" and David Lynch's "Twin Peaks") and the trailer clearly indicated a mixture of black comedy, splatter and psychedelic plot twists. Unfortunately, however, the finished product is an utter mess of a film that turned out boring and ridicule instead of inventive and compelling. It's difficult to point out what exactly went wrong here, but debuting writer Harry Shannon and inexperienced director Yossi Sasson obviously lost their grip on the screenplay right from the beginning. The intended effect of 'is all this happening for real or just occurring inside the protagonist's mentally unstable mind' is never reached and Quinten Jones' performance is far too weak for anyone to care about his gradual descent into madness. He depicts a lowlife actor married to a much older wife who's in a permanent state of coma following a plastic surgery gone awry. The wife's family refused to include Jack in the testament, so he saw no other option than to kidnap her body and hide in a secluded mountain cottage. This happens to be the same cottage where an entire family was brutally slain nearly forty years ago and, on top of that, the closest neighbors are either homosexually perverted delivery boys or desperate sex-craving female deputies. As Jack slowly loses his mind, his wife awakes from her coma and mocks him. Eventually he has no other choice than to pull the plug on her, but the mean-spirited shrew keeps coming back in further evolved states of decay. "Dead and Gone" is primarily a very boring film! The story repeatedly follows Jack's irrelevant and pointless daily routines of running through the woods, draw hideous designs on his porch, chop wood and bicker with his chain-smoking dead wife. The cottage's sinister past is hardly even referred to anymore after the opening credits and Jack's interactions with the deranged locals seemingly just serve as time-filling footage. There are so many other interesting aspects that remain unprocessed, like Jack's liaison with the family attorney or the bizarre war traumas of sexy deputy Kate. "Dead and Gone" features nothing even remotely resembling an horrific atmosphere or nightmarish imagery. Usually, low-budgeted independent horror flicks like this have to rely on grainy cinematography and/or deeply perverted insinuations, but this movie looks and feels as it was made by freshly graduated film students who wanted to do everything nicely by the book. The make-up effects are often downright pathetic and evoke laughter instead of frights. If this was meant as homage to the original "The Evil Dead", then Sam Raimi definitely shouldn't feel honored. The acting performances are miserable, with the one notable exception of Felissa Rose as Jack's attorney. Fans of nonsensical Z-grade horror smut will certainly recognize her odd face, as she was the one and only Angela from "Sleepaway Camp" in 1983.

the low budget equivalent to The Shining

[jordondave-28085 · 4/10 · 27 July 2023]

(2008) Dead And Gone HORROR

Anybody who crave to see different versions of Kubrick's "The Shining" should be able to like this film to which is a much lower budgeted version. Story shows a previous history that occurred in an isolated cabin in the neck of the woods when a husband shoots and kills his whole family which includes wife and child before shooting himself. Then the film jumps to the present time showing a young Englishman moving in with his wife on a breathing ventilator and in a coma which is later revealed was a result of a botched plastic surgery operation and they both ended up staying in this cabin was because of a poker game that this Brit won and decided to take advantage of it since he hardly has any money left! But before some of the revelations, he's also slowly driven mad by creating other people that don't exist or different character traits on actual people, it's suspected that this was a result of living alone with no one to talk to and that the cabin itself has a lot to blame as well because of a previous incident creating delusional thoughts and the film dwells on this a lot with more unsurprising revelations toward the end. The last five minutes of the film absolutely makes no sense despite being well made.

DECENT "B" MOVIE

[nogodnomasters · 8/10 · 20 April 2019]

A shack is abandoned in the Nevada mountains after a murder-suicide. Jack moves into the shack with his comatose wife and a bunch of hospital monitors that go "PING." He is taking all kinds of pills with alcohol. He begins to see the dead people, the victims of the house. At some point he murders his wife, only to be haunted by her. As the movie progresses, she enters into advance decay, although not nearly as effectively done as "Werewolf of London" it was a good effort.

Parental Guide: F-bomb, sex, nudity (Thank you Gillian)

A Clever Offering

[66butch · 7/10 · 28 June 2008]

I just finished watching this and I must comment on how well this film worked. I walked into it with no expectations, and walked away feeling like, finally, there's some hope for the horror genre yet. Even with a relatively low budget, the movie had good story, decent acting, gore, and none of the generic cliché moments that plague today's teeny horror films. With a nod or two, some purists will see the links with films such as Amityville Horror, The Shining, Poltergeist, Evil Dead 2 & even the Troma classic Mother's Day. If you are a fan of the brilliant style of horror from the mid 80's, you will not be disappointed in the styling, story, and cinematography of this film.

All the positive reviews are right.... Its a winner.

[julianacallahan · 9/10 · 5 July 2008]

Dead And Gone may not be popular with teens who gobble up horror flicks through free downloads and want to see a lot of gore and sex.

It has black comedy well blended in the horror. Its exceptionally well directed, cleverly written, with an inspired use of light and color and big budget special effects.

The film is unexpectedly beautiful to look at. And Yossi Sasson creates a unique pacing of syncopated shocks that are really frightening.

The acting is good and the leads are hot looking. Kyle Gass is hilarious as a TV minister. And Robert Herrick plays this giant gay hillbilly. I wont say what it is, but the scene where stuff is oozing out of his mouth is totally gross and laugh out loud funny.

The script was written by Harry Shannon, who is a cult horror author for a good reason. I'm a big fan of his books and he didn't disappoint me.

This movie is for a more mature audience, no matter what their age. There is a lot of character development and a real plot. No teens screaming for an hour.

I recommend it.

Lots of surprise cameos in a twisted thriller.

[lastliberal · 7/10 · 25 April 2009]

David Lynch meets Evil Dead 2 with some Deliverance thrown in? Trying to make sense of this film is like trying to find something worthwhile in the last eight years - it isn't going to happen.

If you are looking for typical horror with breasts and gore, it has that, although the gore is more Japanese style with the pumping blood after heads roll. You will, of course, enjoy the display by Gillian Shure (Disturbia) as the Constable.

But what the film really contains is a story of madness. Did Jack (Quentin Jones) bring the madness with him when he took his comatose wife (Kathrine Bates) to a haunted cabin, or did the ghosts of the cabin infect him to the point where he killed and killed again? It may take a couple of watchings to be sure and, even then, I doubt you will be. Good performances by Quentin Jones and Robert Herrick.

Fans will be surprised by the cameos: Kyle Gass (Tenacious D), Marilyn Ghigliotti (Clerks), Zack Ward (Freddy vs. Jason) and Felissa Rose (Sleepaway Camp).

Good one ya

[chandru_vignesh · 9/10 · 10 December 2008]

Although this movie has a lot of negative reviews, it's a good film in my view.. Don't go to the theaters as u may turn disappointed, but if u r bored and have no job left, then go for this movie in D V D ONLY.. It is really a good film. U may also see that the characters are not acting well.. They seem to perform artificial acting.. But one to say the movie really contains enough bloody scenes which may not be suitable for kids.. This crew is really a worst selection. If the artists were selected in a proper manner, i assure you that many would like this film. The film's plot is really nice and the way the director takes a twist after nearly 10 minutes (I guess..) is a wholesome entertainer. The way the story was presented to the viewers was very good.. So i am sure that after reading my review you would be in a position to take a suitable decision whether to watch this film or not.

Murder on moonshine!

[bloodyruddy · 7/10 · 4 September 2013]

As previous reviews have stated, I get what they mean completely. This film definitely had the qualities of a mystifying Lynchion that seeps in through the cracks that is Evil Dead 2's cabin hysteria and horror!

I quite enjoyed the advanced coloration and distortion of madness and reality behind the camera angles. If this was not enough to grip your collar in, there were plenty of hilarious but grotesquely distasteful characters that localize the bumpkin bliss! A pair of bumbling, troublesome brothers; a careless cop vixen; the perverted televangelist and more!

It was murder on moonshine!

A nice little film!

[Colia_A · 8/10 · 31 August 2008]

I watch a lot of Indie films and am a horror fan to boot. I'll have a viewing without any regards to the subjective bantering from critics and commentators alike. I ended up watching Dead and Gone twice before sending it back to good ole Netflix. Knowing this had to be low budget, I have to say, I liked this movie! It has a lot of light leaks and is not exactly waterproof, but It is not what I expected to see at all. I was quite entertained with the story and quality of acting. The cameos where great! Ben Moody plays a hilarious mountain redneck hick! I laughed at that one! The box lists the names of all the appearances, so I won't say anymore. Moving through the first half, I thought the film took itself a little too serious and then it came into its own for the rest of the film. I realized then where the Director was going. There was definitely some thought that went into this flic.

Rent it! If you like B horror flics with some intelligence.

Here are my marks from 1 - 10. 10 being the best. Remember (LOW BUDGET) Music Score: 9 Harry Manfredini Folks! (Howed they get him?) Sound: 9 5.1 Dolby. If you have a good audio setup, I was impressed! Acting: 7 Its low budget, how many takes can you get? Special fx: 8 Good job in this department! Makeup and FX. Story: 8 Slow start at first, but then picks up. Originality: 8 I'll just say, it wasn't about torture.

Colia