Banshee Chapter (2013) User Reviews

If nothing else, The Banshee Chapter proves that jump scares can still be... scary.

[lnvicta · 6/10 · 1 November 2015]

I'm not a fan of jump scares. I think they're cheap, sometimes manipulative, and they rarely imbue dread. Rather, they can ruin a movie's atmosphere if used incorrectly. Having said that, The Banshee Chapter has the best use of jump scares I've seen in a long, long time. You can sense them coming from a mile away, yet they can still make you crap your pants. I credit this to the director who clearly has a grasp on how to utilize atmosphere and build-ups effectively. These scares don't seem cheap; well, some of them do, but the tone is set by the creepy music, the static, and the robotic voices which really holds the movie together. And the imagery itself is creepy. If I saw one of those things near me, I would freak the f*** out too.

Now, you probably noticed by now that I haven't even hinted at a narrative in this movie, and that's because it's so flimsy it's hardly worth mentioning. It's basically about MK Ultra and the government testing drugs on people, then things start to go horribly wrong. The premise is good, but the actual story - the execution - is hollow and lazy. I didn't care what has happening half the time. I was too busy peeking through my eyes (kidding, but not really) waiting for the damn thing to come out from somewhere. Almost every scene is crafted this way - light on substance, heavy on scares.

Thankfully, horror is about the scares so I have to give The Banshee Chapter credit. Even though it stands for everything I hate in horror movies, this one actually gets it right, and for that alone, bravo.

Good story idea. Just misses the mark the last 30 min.

[frankblack-79961 · 6/10 · 9 October 2021]

While i recommend this for viewing, it does have some issues. Shot like a f.f. Movie, but the last half there doesnt seem to be a person behind the camera, but it is still filmed as such. Strange. There are some other things that bothered me, but i will let you judge for yourself. Overall this is a very decent horror film that made me creeped out a few times. Thats hard to do.

Better next time?

[horizon2008 · 5/10 · 13 December 2013]

I really wanted to like this film. But there was so many things being thrown in the mix it's was just too much to take. Number stations, mk ultra, drugs, government conspiracies, and a barrage of scenes which never really give the viewer time to build up to a feeling of dread. They're just delivered to you in a quick fire fashion and even the "face at the window" shots are so quick you can't define them sometimes. I have to say I liked the Ted Levine character Blackburn as he played it with gusto right to the end. But apart from the outlandish story there are many plot holes and the ending just wasn't that satisfying for me. Still, I respect any new director trying something a little different.

Absolutely terrifying

[caitlintygart · 23 November 2019]

Although it's clear this film was made somewhat on a budget, the differing styles seamlessly blended together of found CIA footage, homemade video recordings and professional videography really helps bring in the unsettling atmosphere. I've seen this film several times, and although it's primarily scary moments come from jump scares and sound cues (with heartbeats and radio sounds) it still never ceases to be creepy as hell. They also blend an extremely real, mysterious and scary occurrence with MK-Ultra and scientific terminology alongside the unknown antagonist, something which really makes everything cohesively terrifying.

I regret watching this movie every time because it makes me want to pee my pants but I also can't get enough. Brilliant.

The Banshee Chapter, or, I Don't Know What To Do With This Film Project, So I Will Just Do ALL Of The Things

[jmzalapa · 3/10 · 25 June 2015]

This film is like a freshman in college: tons of awesome ideas and potential, but no clue what it wants to be when it grows up. Its a jumbled mess of cinematic styles, real life conspiracy theories and pop culture icons, like a B-movie equivalent of an X-Files knock off that tried to string all of these half cooked ideas together with thin exposition and a wanna-be M Knight Shamalaan ending.

The film starts itself as a found footage style horror film, more in the vein of the cryptic scenes from the Ring than in a linear story sort of fashion. the viewer does get the set up, however: DMT-19, this special concoction born of MKUltra, has been obtained by James, a documentary film maker who intends to take the drug and... I don't know... figure out the secret of MKUltra, I guess. A few jumbled cut scenes and a shoehorned jump scare later, we learn he disappears. The viewer is introduced to Anne (Katia Winter), the one time Friend-Zone trapping interest of James, who goes on an investigative journalistic journey to find out what happened to her college friend. She enlists the help of Thomas Blackburn (who is a thinly veiled caricature of Hunter Thompson, played by Ted Levine) the man who provided the DMT-19 to James, the missing friend.

the cinematography jumps around in "found footage" style, "shot like it should be found footage but the camera man probably just is mildly drunk or has Parkinsons", "poorly lit" and "normal". The plot tries to slide in references to an H.P. Lovecraft story as the explanation of the "they" who are coming to get "them", as told to us in Hunter S. Levine exposition. Really though, it's the slowest and worst way to abduct people and transport across dimensions for (what I can only imagine is) an invasion. I'd expect better from Lovecraft's "Old Ones".

What This Film Did Well:

The atmosphere in a few of the scenes lent itself to genuine tension and creepiness. Ted Levine still did a good job with a crappy, K-Mart model Hunter Thompson Character. the Creep Factor of the Number Station transmissions (Google The Conet Project)

What This Film Failed In Doing Well:

Characterization. Motivation. Cinematographic style consistency. Any sort of horror other than lame jump scares. A premise that made sense.

Overall:

Meh. the synopsis sounded cool, but it failed to deliver on anything more than a low budget, jump-scare attempt at horror with a vague knowledge of real-world phenomena, conspiracy theories, Lovecraft and Hunter Thompson. Watch it if you have nothing better to do, and by nothing better, I mean you are bed ridden and the remote is too far away to change the channel.

!!!BIG SPOILER BELOW!!!

OK, so the end of this movie shows us that Blackburn was one of the MKUltra guinea pigs who was electro-shocked into retrograde amnesia. It is further inferred since Anne did not take the substance, but was touched by Blackburn, that she is now a potential target by the Old Ones, just as James' partner was touched by James and also became a target, even though he did not take the drug. So if everyone Blackburn touched became a target, that means that these Old Ones have been snatching people since the 1960s and the drug itself was a means of trans-dimensional body snatching and those who were the Snatched murdered anyone they came in physical contact with... or made them a conduit for the Old Ones. If you don't follow, don't worry... it doesn't make sense.

Also, the subjects taking the DMT were mumbling the chemical composition of the DMT-19, passed as a message from the Old Ones so that the scientists could make this new compound and the Old Ones could use it as a means of conveyance to our dimension. So what attacked the subject who was only on DMT and not the DMT-19, a formula that had not yet been created?

Yet again ALSO, why did Anne not know what the chair in the experiment chamber was used for when Hunter... err... Thomas asked her about it? She saw the MKUltra video files. It literally showed her exactly what that chair was used for.

and still more ALSO, who put the Old One in the Iron Lung? and how did it build a radio transmitter from within the Iron Lung to act as a catalyst with the spook music? did people have to hear the spook music to get Snatched? and if that whole setup was the way the old ones Snatched people, the combination of the DMT-19 and the spook music, once Anne destroyed what I assume was the original Old One and the means of propagating the spook music, how did it project the spook music after it was destroyed?

You know what? Whatever. I'm done. This movie was dumb.

An unexpected treat

[andymclennan · 7/10 · 22 June 2014]

I'd never heard of this film, (and only recognised two of the cast) but found it while channel hopping last night.

The blurb sounded promising so I thought I'd give it a go… and I was glad I did.

The film felt very "indie", a simple (if somewhat odd) idea nicely executed. Other reviews have described it as "Lovecraftian", and that description works well (there is even mention of Lovecraft at one point).

The mood is one of hidden lurking menace, never fully seen, only glimpsed. There were several excellent "jump out of your seat" scares, but even those were tastefully done. The acting is low key and the roles well cast.

I'm not going to say much more as I'd love people to discover this underrated little gem for themselves.

Good Idea, Maybe Not Perfectly Done

[gavin6942 · 5/10 · 17 July 2014]

Journalist Anne Roland explores the disturbing links behind her friend's sudden disappearance, an ominous government research chemical, and a disturbing radio broadcast of unknown origin.

This film has some good things going for it. With using MK-ULTRA as the background, they are able to blend fact and fiction, and certainly horror stories resulting from government experiments exist. This was a clever idea, even if not always done to its full potential.

There is also a very clear reference to Hunter S. Thompson, and that will make lots of people smile. Perhaps actually making the character Thompson and having this re-imagined as a bizarre pseudo-historical film might have helped.

Paranormal Activity meets Videodrome

[moviefansme · 7/10 · 20 September 2023]

Low budget and creepy as all hell. The budget and aesthetic of Paranormal Activity (2007) with the otherworldly broadcasting of Videodrome (1983), set in the location of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) with references to Hunter S. Thompson and Timothy Leary crossed with H. P. Lovecraft and Stephen King. Writer/director Blair Erickson has only helmed this single movie, a studio needs to give him budget to make more, he could be the next David Cronenberg. Part found footage, part fake documentary, this fictional story begins with real historical events explained in the beginning of the movie. What if this bioengineered mind altering drug the United States government really created could still be found and what would it be like for the people who take it? As we see, it's horrifying. As the audience learns the history of what was done, we realize the characters are in even greater peril than they know.

The Banshee... uhm, strike that... The Boring Chapter...

[paul_haakonsen · 3/10 · 21 December 2013]

Given the poster to this movie and the movie synopsis, I had initially expected something more from the movie. And I must admit that I found the movie to be rather slow-paced and anything but scary.

The story is about a journalist Anne Roland (played by Katia Winter) who is exploring the events revolving around a chemical experiment, where she is helped by the eccentric writer Thomas Blackburn (played by Ted Levine).

I found the storyline to be dull and rather uninteresting. And there were very little aspects of the story that had any real appeal to me. As such, then the movie turned out to be a rather big swing and a miss. There are far better horror and thriller movies available.

I will say that Ted Levine did a nice job in carrying the movie. But his performance wasn't sufficient enough to salvage this movie.

The movie is filmed with a documentary-like style camera-work. You know, those hand-held in the midst of everything kind of styles. Now, I don't enjoy this one bit. When I watch a movie, I want proper and steady camera-work, not something that I could have done myself with my own DV camera.

And the whole 'based on true events' aspect to the movie? Mmmm-hmmm, sure...

There was an interesting H. P. Lovecraft reference delivered by Ted Levine. And that was, for my case, the most interesting thing about this entire movie.

"The Banshee Chapter" might be suitable if you are a hardcore Ted Levine fan, but otherwise, there is nothing interesting to be had here.

Fear & Loathing on Short Wave Radio.

[johnbkaramazov · 6/10 · 13 October 2014]

The Banshee Chapter is a decent horror flick with a lot of potential that unfortunately fails to deliver on most counts. The film starts really well, but sadly doesn't manage to keep up with its early promise. It does have a few genuinely nail biting moments in it however, which make it well worth a watch. I would recommend approaching this film in the knowledge that it is a highly flawed yet enjoyable hour and a half, so that you aren't disappointed and can enjoy the film for what it is; A relatively well- made chiller with some very good ideas, executed clumsily. I feel that with a tightening of the plot and a better lead actress, there could have been a really excellent film here. Still, The Banshee Chapter is much better than the majority of horror films out there, and definitely worth viewing at least once if you're in the mood for a fright.

Good premise but way underdeveloped

[wormsoftheerth · 4/10 · 24 January 2014]

*(slight spoilers)*

As a person who is interested in hallucinogens, astral projection, the occult, conspiracies, other dimensions, etc. this movie obviously appealed to me. However, my interest (and therefore degree of knowledge thereof) in the aforementioned is probably also what killed this movie for me. Anyway here is my breakdown:

Good: This movie was very good at being creepy. The premise was excellent and quite unsettling. The comically fake but decently executed "found footage" of MK ULTRA experiments was sufficiently creepy (though perhaps better in concept than execution). The shortwave radio stuff was exceptionally strange and creepy. Where they got the special DMT from was a nice touch. The tension was good; there were tons of predictable boo scares but they were done well enough for a movie of this budget.

Bad: Massively underdeveloped plot line. They could have done SO MUCH with the premise to make it horrific and bizarre. It's not really a spoiler though I guess it could be seen as one, but the entire plot can be summed up by the phrase they use "the DMT doesn't make you hallucinate, it turns your mind into a receiver and they can get in". That's it, that's the entire plot, now you can skip the movie. And if you missed it the first time don't worry because they repeat that line over and over throughout the second half of the movie. There is no further explanation beyond that phrase, you never see or learn about the entities "from beyond" (yeah they drop in that HPL reference), there is no motivation for them or for the government conspiracy/ies (I don't think they even talk about MK Ultra in any significant depth, which in itself could have been quite scary). Oh, sometimes peoples faces change and bleed for, um, some reason. There is no purpose for why any of the stuff in the movie happens - each scene and idea presented exists simply to be creepy and holds no weight or goal beyond that. Better dialog could have vastly enhanced this. I think a lot of stuff that they do, for example the unnecessarily glitchy cameras and bringing up that Lovecraft story, is done solely to attempt to cover up the fact that they had nothing interesting or substantial to provide the viewer with, but their hope is that the viewers mind will fill in the gaps with something good on it's own. There is next to no character development, and no evolution of the plot. Basically it starts with DMT being weird & scary and it ends with DMT still being weird & scary and no one knows (or cares) how or why. I ended up falling asleep towards the end because it was just so gripping...er, except not. I re-watched the ending, but, as predicted, I hadn't missed much. Also, a couple asides: DMT is a naturally occurring substance that exists in many plants (and some animals) which people have been extracting and ingesting for quite a long time (Ayahuasca, etc) without dying. Also to my knowledge MK Ultra focused around LSD (and to a lesser extent some other things) but not DMT. close enough I guess.

Overall, I sort of enjoyed watching this because it was tense and unsettling at times, but ultimately due to lack of ideas, and perhaps budget, it failed to deliver.

Tense and scary

[victoryismineblast · 8/10 · 19 January 2014]

Just watched this and was pleasantly surprised. Especially after seeing the IMDb page and checking out the HORRIBLE poster and low rating.

Essentially a tale about government chemical mind control experiments, with a mix of a scary shortwave radio transmission and some super cool Lovecraftian elements a la From Beyond, it is done in a scary manner, with a mix of found footage, real and faked news clips, and sometimes just plain old standard filmed storytelling.

The flashlight, a common horror cliché, is also used to great effect here. I can see some people not liking this one and it being a polarizing movie but I enjoyed it very much. It also boasts a great performance by Ted Levine, who freaked us out as Rusty Nail in "Joyride." This is the first scary movie I've seen in a while. The last thing I can say is it's a mix of originality, cliché, and "borrowing", but what movie today isn't?

All over the place, but not without merit

[Leofwine_draca · 6/10 · 18 October 2015]

BANSHEE CHAPTER is a weird little horror flick that offers something different to the usual ghost or stalk-'n'-slash thrills. The plot incorporates government mind-testing, a 'ghost' radio station, government conspiracy, an anarchist writer modelled on Hunter S. Thompson, and aliens, alongside some traditional ghostly spirits designed to pop up in scare scenes and spook the viewer.

It's not really all that successful because the plot ingredients are all over the place. At times this strives to be a found footage flick and at other times it just plays out normally. I did like Katia Winter's protagonist, who's more intelligent and less of a screamer than the usual horror heroine, but the real stand-out performance here comes from an unrecognisable Ted Levine (SILENCE OF THE LAMBS) as the boozy, washed-up writer who gets drawn into a sinister conspiracy. BANSHEE CHAPTER is a weird little film all right and fans looking for something different might just find something to tempt them here as the creepy atmosphere is spot on.

awful and inept amateurish film making

[midnight_cinephile · 1/10 · 8 July 2014]

The back story on this was that the writer/director of this "film" was chosen by the production company and given a budget because he was Carnegie-Mellon alumni.

So basically we have a very amateurish hackneyed film made by a trust fund/ivy hipster click and it really shows.

Let me start by saying I have done a huge amount of research on MKYLTRA/MKNAOMI and the CIA/ US government's "clandestine" drug testing programs.....so this is familiar ground for me. This in of itself is a very intriguing and fascinating topic that has been widely researched and documented.Furthermore I am a huge fan of Hunter S Thompson and H.P.Lovecraft,and finally have also researched and have working knowledge of what number stations are.

Please see the conet project for more info on numbers stations.

The writer/producer/director seemingly and sophomorically was naturally intrigued by the aforementioned "spook" elements and felt he needed to write a screenplay combing all of these interesting and dark cul-de-sacs of literature and black ops.

I understand the impetuous and the attraction to dark,arcane and esoteric subject matter.

What I don't understand is the execution.I felt as though my time was wasted and my intellect insulted by this film.There was no real thread tying any of these elements together, There was no attention to detail,script writing or storyline. It seems as though a bunch of film school wannabe's smoked some high grade kush and wrote a half baked screenplay based on what they thought was cool, "spooky" and "dark"

The end result is garbage.

Gaping plot holes,vapid character development,unbelievable character actions that defy the suspension of reality or belief that that any film maker has license to use....clichéd trope after hackneyed senseless cliché,poor special effects culminating with a scary guy in a monster suit and insect gloves enveloped in a weak soundtrack/sound design.

Next time hire a writer that knows his craft son.

This was such a waste of very fertile material,money,human effort and time and hard drive space.

I was really surprised to find out the production team for breaking bad was involved in this toilet clogger.I reckon their input most likely saved it from being totally un-watchable.

This is a Pathetic,abysmal and atrocious film for uninformed people that are clueless about numbers stations,Dr HST,MKULTRA/human drug experimentation by the CIA and H.P.Lovecraft.

I wanted this film to be good,I really and truly wanted it to succeed but instead I was angered and my intellect insulted.

Please watch Jacob's ladder for a REAL and ASS-KICKING film about MKULTRA and the effects of BZ gas on Vietnam vets.

Avoid Banshee chapter if you pride yourself a film buff who has a modicum of taste and standard in their horror/sci-fi viewings,as this is cheap half-assed schlock made by rich kids.

mk Nultra

[bob_meg · 3/10 · 2 February 2014]

By now, most of us have heard about the government funded (or at least endorsed) MK-ULTRA project from the '60s and '70s, where US agencies ran experiments in mind control on unsuspecting volunteers. All true.

"Banshee Chapter" opens with a statement similar to this and then, in the next title card states: "The results were horrifying." Also true.

Now the question...does Banshee Chapter help flesh this thesis out and perhaps dig deeper into one of the (no doubt many) horrifying self-inflicted chapters in our national history? No, it doesn't. It veers immediately off into SciFi/Horror-land. Which is not such a bad thing...if the story, acting, and virtually all of the directing didn't suck. Which it does.

And THAT sucks because, judging from the first twenty minutes of Blair Erickson's feature debut, Erickson's got it going on. The first third of the film is intriguing plot-wise and there are some genuine jump-in-your-seat jump cuts.

But following the introduction of Ted Levine's character (a gonzo "radical" journalist obviously modeled on Hunter Thompson, minus the cigarette holder) the film falls inexplicably flat. The momentum runs out and the pacing is sluggish...there are too many scenes in the dark with Katia Winter and Levine yelling at each other and even the scares begin to wane: Erickson starts to repeat himself in an endless loop that almost makes you want to turn the film off by the third act.

As for Winter, I found her performance to be a bit too monotone and colorless, though to be honest Erickson really didn't flesh her (or her supposed love-interest, a 2 second plot point, that) character out well enough. We get enough of that background to care in the beginning, but then, it's as if the film is holding back for budgetary reasons. And what they wind up shooting is just same old same old.

For instance, the radio transmissions, which could have been really creepy if they had been staged with any flair, fall tone deaf. That saw is as old as "Close Encounters," but even there it was well done because --- at one time, Spielberg was a helluva filmmaker. And that was about flying saucers for god's sake!

It's not that I found the detour Banshee Chapter took that implausible or irritating --- certainly Erickson is not mandated to give us a docudrama about MKULTRA. But, come on dude...at least give us something that doesn't put us to freaking' sleep!

The parts meant to be scary... Yeah, they scared me

[ihearthorrorfilm · 7/10 · 9 January 2014]

I'm definitely on the fence about how I feel about this film. On the one side, every scene that was meant to be scary, scared the poop out of me 100 percent. But, on the other side, every thing in between I found to be a little confusing and well, Blah. I was really confused by the misconception of the film being a found-footage film, when only the first few minutes were actual found footage themed. The rest of the film, which is shot found footage style i.e. guerilla style, is only that. I kept thinking that another person was filming the main character, but it ended up just being the way the film is shot. I think most of you will understand what I'm referring to once you watch it. My other beef with this film is that the story is all over the place making it hard to follow. I found myself tuning out every now and again because the main character was super blah and I had a hard time understanding what she was doing half the time. But regardless of the story and actors, this film is effing SCARY! Every few minutes, something would happen that was so horrifying that the images are burned into my brain. The creepy music and the subject matter is enough to get you past the annoying things and help to keep you focused on the reasons you came upon The Banshee Chapter in the first place. I swear to you that on more than one occasion during this film, I let out yelp/scream in many of the scenes. You know that noise that comes out of your body that you were completely unaware you were capable of making, until you are scared to the point that all cards are on the table. Yeah, this film did that to me multiple times throughout. So did I think this was a movie with a great story, no… not really. But do I think you should watch it if you love being scared, Absa-frickin-lootly!

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No No No No No No

[peterdrew1 · 1/10 · 20 February 2015]

Max Payne without Max Payne.

Don't even do this one on a "buy one get one free" night at the rental place.

Nothing good about this movie. Even Ted Levine is average. The montage they do portraying him as some Hunter S. Thompson type character was the best thing about this movie. That's it.

and, the claims they make on the cover about it being scary....I have seen scarier episodes of Neighbours. I am tired of "so called" horror writers/directors using images that jump out from side of screen to "scare".

I have been a log time member of IMDb and this is my first review. I just want to make sure no-one else wastes money on this movie.

Just rubbish.

Finders fee

[kosmasp · 6/10 · 24 December 2013]

There is no shortage of Found Footage movies right now, but this might be one of the first that goes 3-D with it. In select cinemas (or on your 3-D Player) that is of course. While that doesn't necessarily make the movie better, the addition of one Ted Levine ultimately does. Apart from our (pretty) female lead, he is the one people will remember from this movie very fondly.

The movie itself is tricky at times and has some nice little twists here and there. You'll have the usual "Don't go there" and "Look behind you" moments (mixed with the "No sane person would do that"), but overall the movie (and the actors) are selling it quite nicely. Not great, but a nice little horror movie to watch

Excellent Subject Matter, Less Impressive Execution

[rapid_randy · 5/10 · 15 September 2017]

The first ten minutes are extremely interesting and sets the stage for what should have been a one of a kind classic. Unfortunately, it's all down hill from there. As a huge fan of Found Footage, I don't like the addition of scenes not recorded by the camera which supposedly filmed the footage. If you're somewhat familiar with MK Ultra and the drug DMT, you'll probably be letdown and frustrated by the direction they take. There's some jump scares and very little thinking required so as an average horror movie, it succeeds.

Boring and unconvincing.

[fedor8 · 23 July 2020]

"A great Lovecraftian horror story" they said. "Scary and tense movie" they said. Which Lovecraft stories about idiotic CIA plots to conduct drug tests are they babbling about? Which scene here is scary? One of the many ultra-cheesy jump-scare scenes, or one of those phony-looking "really old" Nixon-era government footage scenes in which barely employable actors pretend to lose their minds by screaming suddenly after a minute of silence?

"The movie starts really well" they said. No. The beginning is even worse than the stuff later on. I couldn't have been more bored with the corny pseudo-documentary intro if I locked myself up in a solitary-confinement prison cell.

Ridiculous paranoid left-wing nonsense, as per usual. Films like these are a dime-a-dozen. Apparently the CIA exists only so they can sadistically torture American civilians, and to prevent communists from taking over America. Well, clearly they failed abysmally! Communism is now in nearly every pore of decaying American society. Which is why the vast majority of current movies is so blatantly PC, and so laughably biased. There are not-so-subtle hints that this writer is a great fan of Bill Clinton. (Which is very telling.) The writer suggests that his arkansasoidical hero made sure that the CIA stopped testing drugs on "American citizens". I am just not sure whether that was before or after do-gooder Clinton found out about Jeff Epstein's pedo island yet chose to be quiet about it? (There. I can play this goofy conspiracy game too. Two can play that game. Or a billion, on YouTube.)

Then there is that over-the-top early interrogation scene in which cops behave like Stalinist gulag guards, speaking the way American cops never do. Only movie cops talk this way i.e. like raging psychopaths and dungeon masters. Perhaps the clod who wrote this script ought to take a trip to a randomly picked Latin American banana republic to find out what real corruption and police brutality are like. Now there's a chance for a rude awakening. Liberals hate that.

Five minutes of boring silence... BANG! Five minutes of boring non-moody silence... BANG! BADABING! That's the movie in a nutshell, that is its predictable rhythm and its only miserly little strategy to justify itself as a horror film. Awful "jump-scares" are neither jump-worthy nor scare anyone but the most frighten-happy of inexperienced movie-going mice. They shouldn't be called "jump-scares" anymore, but perhaps "sudden loud and annoying noises that intended to replace real scares and help a generic plot from crumbling under the weight of its own tedium". I know, that's a bit too long, but at least it's accurate.

I was utterly bored.

Small wonder this writer/director hasn't done anything since 2013 i.e. since he hatched this silly duckling.

My apologies to ducks. Especially since I know for a fact that even Donald Duck would have written/directed a better movie.

Banshee Chapter was a surprising find and a great watch.

[BandSAboutMovies · 6/10 · 3 October 2018]

A big part of the movie, which touches on a number of conspiracy theories, deals with numbers stations. These shortwave radio stations broadcast formatted numbers, which some believe are coded messages to intelligence officers operating in foreign countries. The majority of these stations use speech synthesis to vocalize numbers, although audio tricks like phase-shift keying and frequency-shift keying, as well as Morse code transmissions, are not uncommon. These stations may or may not have set schedules and channels - there are a lot of variables.

I first learned about numbers stations thanks to the incredibly influential book Big Secrets by William Poundstone. From the initiation rituals of lodges and secret clubs to backmasking, subliminal messages, fast food recipes and, yes, numbers stations, this book took me from an inquisitive 15-year-old to an absolute maniac desperately searching for hidden knowledge - kind of like the characters in this film.

Another place that people first discovered numbers stations was on Wilco's album "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot," which uses samples of various stations.

Banshee Chapter is the directorial and writing debut of Blair Erickson, who based this movie off the H. P. Lovecraft short story From Beyond, which in turn inspired 1986's From Beyond. In addition to numbers stations, it also has threads taken from MK Ultra, a series of hallucinogenic drug experiments performed by the United States Government, and the gonzo adventures of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson.

Starting with stock footage of President Clinton and others talking about MK Ultra, we meet James Hirsch, a young man whose research has led to him taking the drug used in the experiments, dimethyltryptamine-19 (DMT-19). Soon, he becomes able to hear strange music, voices and numbers from a nearby radio before he anxiously says that something is coming to wear him as a large shadowy figure causes the footage to stop.

That's when we meet the real protagonist - Anne (Katia Winter, Dexter) - a friend of James who wants to discover where he has disappeared to. She soon learns that the broadcast that James heard is a phantom numbers station that can only be heard in the desert at a very specific time of night. She tries to find it, only to see a monstrous form that she runs from.

A reference in James' notes to "Friends in Colorado" is all about Thomas Blackburn (character actor extraordinaire Ted Levine), a Hunter S. Thompson analog. He tricks her into taking DMT-19 and begins to bring her along on his adventures. One of James' friends, Callie, is part of his orbit and she slowly becomes controlled by the shadow creature. They soon learn that DMT-19 allows otherworldly creatures to broadcast signals directly into human bodies and take them over after a certain amount of time. Even worse, MK Ultra was actually created by these entities, aided and abetted by pineal tissue from a reanimated dead woman.

Being so close to the number channel generator - the dead woman who is the primary source - makes James vomit blood, as he'd been an MK Ultra test subject in college. He shoots himself rather than allow the entities to take him over. Anne finds James' clothing, suggesting that something was wearing his skin, before setting the test facility on fire.

Taken into police custody, Anne relates the movie's events to a friend. Although she learned that Thomas never gave her the drug, it turns out that the ability to hear the numbers station comes through human touch. Anne passes this along to a co-worker who comes to visit as she begins to hear the station again.

The worst movie I've seen in a very long time

[Seth_Rogue_One · 1/10 · 24 July 2014]

Crap, garbage, filth, useless... There are many words to describe a movie in a negatory fashion, but I don't think there are words enough in the dictionary to describe just how bad this movie is.

It starts out somewhat interesting incorporating real news footage to make it seem like this story could actually have happened...

And it also starts out as a found footage/documentary which adds on to this...

And to be honest the first 10 minutes doesn't suck, they don't but I still can't bare to give this movie the lowest of ratings because everything after that is complete utter crap...

As I said it starts out as a found footage/documentary but that changes rather quickly and you start to wonder how the lead could possibly have six different angles depicting the events going on, does she have six cameramen?

No they just all of a sudden decided that it wasn't a found footage/documentary anymore...

Anyways even if I was to look aside that the plot is trying to confuse the viewer that it's actually clever when in fact it's just plain terrible and the actress who takes the lead after the likable guy in the beginning disappears is just undeniably unlikeable and you'd struggle finding a more bland and uninspired performance...

But you can't really blame her, who could be inspired with a script like this...

And did I tell you how incredibly boring and not at all scary this movie is? Well it really is...

Avoid at all costs

A Genuinely Creepy Film With An Original Premise

[derrickchow · 9/10 · 24 October 2013]

I just finished watching this film at the After Dark Film Festival in Toronto.

I was impressed. It has a genuinely creepy atmosphere and well-earned jump scares that had me leaping out of my seat a few times.

The film is an effective mix of traditional filmmaking,'found footage', and even actual documentary footage and news reels. This melding of fiction with 'faux-real' footage and factual footage was perfect given the subject matter (which revolves around the real-life MKUltra 'mind control experiments' conducted by the CIA during the Cold War). The film also cleverly mixes in the genuinely creepy lore of shortwave 'numbers stations', resulting in a calling card for the film's villain which is flat-out *beep* scary.

Speaking of the 'villain', I don't want to give away too much, but I wanted to congratulate the director for creating a 'Big Bad' that is unnervingly ambiguous and 'unknowable', both in terms of motivation and appearance.

The performances are solid, and I particularly enjoyed the Hunter S. Thompson-esque character for the humour he brought to the proceedings.

Tonally, this movie reminded me of the Mothman Prophecies and a lot of the better 'Creepypasta' stories from the internet. I give this a big thumbs up :)

A decent horror with some Lovecraft elements in it /MILD SPOILERS/

[SuperKino · 6/10 · 28 January 2014]

The mokumentary/found footage genre is without doubts excessively over-used in the last years especially in the horror genre, nine movies out of ten with this kind of gimmick are garbage, "The Banshee Chapter" of course isn't a masterpiece, but is the one that i save.

"The Banshee Chapter" (i still need to understand why put Banshee in the title because that has nothing to do with the plot) have some appealing "fresh" elements like number stations, mind control, psychedelic/mind-expanding drugs, other dimensions and...Lovecraftian horror too.Yeah because if you've read Lovecraft's "From beyond" when like 30 minutes in the movie you can easily think about it and then have confirm of the excerpt later, when the character interpreted by Ted Levine sums the short-story to the main character.

Of course there are flaws too. I can accept the cheap visual FX and creatures, probably it was just a matter of budget and OK, but the big flaw is that all the good and interesting elements described before are not, in my opinion, deepened enough. All the explanation that you receive are just plain, even the plot twist at the end is nice but not a mind blowing one.

In conclusion "The Banshee Chapter" is a decent creepy movie with a good story concept and some good jump scares, it's really interesting in the first part but lose some of his appeal in the second part but a 6 out of 10 is well deserved anyway.

Seeking Serious Fear & Loathing...NOT!

[AudioFileZ · 2/10 · 9 February 2014]

The Banshee Chapter plays like a group of lesser film school students put forward their best effort. This is to say one must park most expectations at the door not to worry about a bit of cheese here and some embarrassing moments pushing something that clearly overreaches any credibility which it certainly would benefit from.

As the film opens there is a montage of interviews with people involved with the real, and absolutely harrowing MK-Ultra experiments. These totally serious newsreels about something definitely factual built up expectations that this movie would quite simply betray. This was a miscue right off the bat and hurts the fictional film that follows as something much closer to real and less (ridiculously silly) paranormal was expected.

There was a silly segment about random electronic numbers just coming in like a radio transmission from a radio station in the ether. Some writer chick is on this stuff because a friend took some of the still available drug concoction from the MK-Ultra crap and died, or went up in smoke or something (I don't know or care). The last straw was at 22-minutes when the writers tried to introduce a character based on Hunter S. Thompson. You can't make silly stuff seem like it has a shred of credibility by bringing a character totally plagiarized. Maybe for some this is watchable, sadly for me is is so bad it isn't even laughable. The estate of Thompson should be contemplating their options as it sullies an image Hunter cultivated to be a certain kind of respectable in all of his anti-establishment glory (i.e. his brand of freedom versus everything).Over and out at 25-minutes. I give it 3 because the story is 0, but the effort deserves at least 2 or 3 and the actors do a respectable job with absolutely terrible characters.