Banshee Chapter

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.

Second best horror movie i have seen ( of the thousands i watch) great suspense, original storyline, based loosely on true events, great acting, and horrifying entities with insanely creepy radio broadcast when they get near. all out one of my favorites, might re-watch, somewhat thick and murky plot. The only flaw. this was totally surpass-able because of the shear sense of being so involved in the action that even if you were confused the entertainment was still thrilling. I really felt the way the entities where hidden and not really revealed, or at least not revealed for long, added a eerie sense of mystery. DEFINITELY recommend watching this master piece if you can handle it and can keep up with a lightning fast plot.

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.

"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.

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.

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! Please like me on Facebook! You can read more of my reviews and get info on the latest movies in horror: http://www.facebook.com/pages/I-Heart-Horror/338327476286206

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.

I've been hearing about this movie for a while - it got a lot of positive attention on the festival circuit last year so it was nice to finally be able to watch it on VOD at my own home. It's a solid movie with some real gut-wrenching, nail-biting shocks. It takes a lot to shock me but this movie got to me. Also it's based on actual creepy phenomenon like the government's MK-ULTRA program, unexplained short-wave "numbers" stations, various goings on deep in the Black Rock desert etc etc. Although it's not perfect, I would rate it up there as one of the scariest movies I've ever seen. Don't miss it.

"The Banshee Chapter" is a blend of found footage, and tradition filming styles that create a smooth, creepy visual horror story. The film is directed by Blair Erickson and stars Katia Winter, Ted Levine, Michael McMillian, Jenny Gabrielle, William Sterchi, Alex Gianopoulos in mad science tale that is part urban legend, part Lovecraftian, centering around a journalist seeking answers to the disappearance of her college friend after an experiment goes terribly wrong. The story in "The Banshee Chapter" creates an almost instantly captivating tale around urban legends that arose after it was made public of the black ops experiments the Government implemented on citizens during the 60's and 70's using LSD. That is a conspiracy lore ideology that I find myself trolling the internet reading. This element weaves eerily effortlessly into the Lovecraft world of horror, particularly the story surrounding the scientist that creates an antenna that becomes a gateway between worlds ultimately allowing both sides to move between. "The Banshee Chapter" pushes out a dark, nightmare that stays serious, flows nicely, and maintains a chilling atmosphere from start to finish without becoming boring. The acting in this film is pretty stellar, not too melodramatic or forced but so polished that it just seems over-rehearsed. The transitions between the found footage scenes and the standard third person point-of-view are balanced and move smoothly without the effects being made into some big production. By which I mean the scenes move in and out without seeming pointless or just "stuck in" the film with no purpose other than to cash in on the "footage" craze. "The Banshee Chapter" takes the two styles and mixes them with ease which makes the film suspenseful and chilling. The direction and character development felt authentic and created an actual connection between me and the story, something that often times falls to the wayside in "found footage" driven films. The special effects and soundtrack in "The Banshee Chapter" both work nicely in creating a chilling, and entertaining atmosphere with moments that are gripping, and intense while feeling creepy as heck. The special effects are the usual gimmicks and tricks to create shock moments and suspense but the director maintains control of the elements so nothing looks cheap or pointless, or more importantly lacking in fright. I jumped several times while watching this movie. The soundtrack and sound effects create an overture to the creepy atmosphere that the acting and story develops, really pulling me into the complete story. Mostly instrumental with some vocal effects, the soundtrack is both timeless and powerful. "The Banshee Chapter" is a fun, fright-filled, horror story that I found to be true to the genre without seeming hokey.