The Lurking Fear

After going missing during a film shoot, a team looking into the history of a local insane asylum is joined by a woman trying to find what happened to them, and as they explore the facility learn the devious nature of what's happening in the asylum forcing them to get out alive.

On the whole, this was a serviceable at best genre effort. Among the brighter spots here is a workable concept involving a slight twist to the reality-show-shoot feature. Although it starts with the exploits of the crew on the shoot and them going through their routine, it soon turns into a slightly different kind of effort where the group has now gone missing and the girlfriend of one of them heads off to the location to look for them and gets caught up in their same fate. That makes the first half somewhat more intriguing than expected with the search for the team and what they reveal about the backstory of the location setting this up with a decent enough starting point. After getting caught in the facility, this becomes quite fun with the reveal about the team still being alive and stuck in a demonic loop that showcases the genuinely chilling and creepy location. The confusing, never-ending layout, is believable as a location where what was thought to be demonic beings hideout in the shadows launching attacks on the team in several fine confrontations that take place inside the facility. This becomes what drives the final half here where the series of gruesome scenarios involves the reveal of the real purpose for bringing everyone together and what's at the facility which has some fine gore involved as well to give the film some positives. There are some issues here that hold it back. One of the biggest issues with it is the inherent confusion of what's happening to the team the longer they're inside. It's impossible to know if they're trapped in the real world or a supernatural realm, if the creatures are inbred human offspring or demonic entities summoned to the location, or even how the team got lost inside which is just a fraction of the questions this one raises. The other issue with this one is the twist reveal for the final half sending this into a bizarre series of reveals that are stupid in trying to piece together how these events come together and it's just difficult to care about this section which lowers this one overall.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, and Brief Nudity.

There are few things that are certain in this post COVID world. One thing that is an absolute certainty is that a Tubi Original with Michael Madsen and Robert Davi in the cast will be flat out awful. With this knowledge, I gave it a shot anyway. I shouldn't have. This movie - I'm using that word very, very loosely- is horrendous. Stupefyingly horrendous. It isn't Madsen or Davi's fault. The former is barely in the movie and the latter actually is the lone bright spot. As is the norm with a failure of this magnitude, the script is the cause of said failure. A good location, game actors, and some fair cinematography cannot overcome a trash fire of a script. Give this a hard pass. You're welcome.

I watched this mostly because I am a HP Lovecraft fan and this is loosely based on his story, The Lurking Fear. His name isn't in the credits, but it's clearly inspired by him, by the use of the name Martense and there unique eye coloring.

Essentially in the story, mysterious deaths happen around an old decayed mansion, and the narrator slowly discovers the horrible cause.

Here, there's no subtlety, a crew goes into an abandoned asylum. Only you don't really see that much. It jumps around and it basically turns into a sadistic torture porn story with the two lead characters, one being Robert Davi looking ridiculous with emo hair and a silly hat.

And while it's somewhat sadistic, it's not particularly gory. There are no scares, either, like i said, sadism seems the goal. But it's lame, as there is no character development except maybe for the bald sheriff.

Honestly between the extreme echo due to not having a real mic and the poor storyline I don't know why I continued this film. I'm so bored. So many plot holes! Just seeing scenes go from one scene to the next with no bridge to connect it. Then they showed the dog in the cage and nothing came out of that. Another trash gore film. The repetitive sound effects that they keep inserting as a filler sound. The music. Everything is bad and like mentioned, no redeeming qualities. Absolute garbage. The character count is too high for garbage films. A lot of these producers need to stick to showing their work to their friends. Just because you have a budget, doesn't mean you should film a damn movie. I left the last few minutes unwatched.