Ceremony

I'm not going to belabor how bad this movie sucks--the 3.3 star rating it currently has says that for me. Instead, I'm going to try to be somewhat constructive here. So, we have an el-cheapo film with amateur actors, shot almost entirely inside someone's house, but that doesn't mean it has to suck. The truth is you could throw a ton of money at this lame flick and it would still suck because the story sucks. So, working with what they had, how could they fix it? Well, from where I sit you have two choices: you can either have a well-written script that engages the viewer or you can fill it up with a bunch of nudity and violence and go for the shock value. I'm not trying to be snarky here, but those are your options when that is all you have to work with, however, this movie employs neither of those tactics so it is just bad, not even bad enough to be so bad it's good. Not worth your time.

This stupid, stupid religious horror film starts out with an arbitrary premise and goes precipitously downhill from there. Evidently there is some sort of demon that has been held captive for thousands of years, and for some unexplained reason it is set loose every thousand years. To stretch its legs, I suppose. One girl gathers together a bunch of devout college age believers to witness the demon and prevent its escape, and what we get is a ludicrous mess of a movie that does no justice to the enticing cover box, which should qualify as false advertisement.

Let me tell you a little secret about that demon on the cover box, by the way. It is by leaps and bounds the most interesting thing that the movie has going for it, and it is literally on screen for less than one second. That should give you an idea of the intelligence level of the movie.

I made the mistake of watching this disaster two days after watching The Passion of the Christ, arguably one of the most powerful religious films ever made, so when I saw Jesus with fangs in this movie I almost fell over backwards at the sheer, overwhelming dumbness of it all. Even without the fangs the guy who plays Jesus looked like some slob that got up off his couch just long enough to put on some sheets and make a pathetic attempt to play Jesus. This guy blew it that badly and he was only playing Jesus in some girl's nightmare. Then again, he fits right in with the rest of the actors, who deliver some staggeringly bad performances.

One IMDb user makes the astounding claim that this movie is beautiful, then goes on to suggest that the acting is not as bad as other reviewers claim. Well, in that regard he's right.

It's worse.

"The Ceremony" is nothing less than the cinematic adaptation of the wet sludge that pools as the bottom of landfill. Don't be fooled by the great looking screen grabs on the back of the box; the makers of "The Ceremony" apparently shot the fist four minutes on 35mm, then shot the rest of the film on 3/4" U-matic video... with a $10 Radio Shack microphone... that they probably stole. The "demon-angel" that is released into the world looks like an octogenarian that escaped from an nursing home who just wandered onto a film set. I will never get back the precious minutes spent watching college students blunder around a 2,000 square foot home like it was the Biltmore estate, lost in the dark and unable to accomplish the simple act of opening a door. It's a pitiful attempt. Not even fun-bad... not even bad-bad... just pitiful.

I haven't seen any flicks made by Joe Castro, the director of this flick and by watching this flick, his first attempt I don't think I will ever do it again.

This must be one of the worst acting I have seen so far and I'm in the scene from the early eighties. It's just like you go watching a stage play at school done by your children. Nothing moves and every actor just waits for his lines. The only name worth mentioning is Forrest J Ackerman, but even he can't save this cheesy flick. And I can even but the word camp to it. When Jesus is shown I could take it but suddenly he opens his mouth and he's a vampire, really, and watch his hand go up, he's got stigmata.

The best thing and what makes it watchable is the demon itself. It's very well crafted and is really the best thing to see. It walks around even in it's nudies full frontal. That was a big surprise. And the explosion of a head is watchable too. But it is really a extreme low budget, vomiting and a snake going in a mouth is all done off screen.

This is a flick that you just can't get it that it ever was released but if you are into camp or cheesy flicks then you will enjoy it. Really, the sleeve of the DVD and the demon itself are the best thing to watch.

Gore 0/5 Nudity 1/5 Effects 0,5/5 Story 1/5 Comedy 0/5

The video box cover for this film looks great, featuring a big nasty Devil with white boiled-egg eyeballs and some pretty cool looking rams horns. The premise is even pretty interesting: a clockwork device that has been running for thousands of years is finally winding down. At the stroke of midnight, it will release an irritable fallen angel, and it is up to a group of devoutly religious students to keep it trapped within the mechanism for a few more thousand years.

Unfortunately, this film falls a few miles short of actually being good. The budget is substandard, the actors seem to have flunked out of drama school and the whole thing turns into a messy, sloppy, cheap looking splatter film. The Devil is still decently icky looking, but it doesn't get a lot of screen time. Instead, we get a possession scene featuring a giant tequila worm crawling down the throat of an annoying girl who has been tied up and unwisely (and conveniently) left alone in a dark room. Yeah, that's exactly what I would do if a demon was loose in MY house, uh huh. The ending is cheesy and not even kindly old Forrest Ackerman in a wheelchair can save this putrid mess.

I give this film 2 stars - one for the Devil make-up and one more for the original idea, which unfortunately goes nowhere and never develops. It's a shame because, in the right hands, this could have been a pretty good film with a cool new story to tell.