Uh, someone TRIED to make a horror movie.
I had no idea they still made these. Italian horror knockoffs. In the 70's and 80's, the Italians knocked off just about anything successful in horror or exploitation. Only they were specific! The Unkind, from 2021, is a knockoff of... Well, ya got me. One thing it is, is an endless string of horror movie tropes and cliches, some from seemingly totally unrelated movies (yes, there's even a scene where a ball rolls into a room! No reason). This movie is supposed to be about a witch? Or a demon? Or witches? Or demons? Or possession? I could not have eaten a box of Alpha Bits, and crapped a worse story and dialogue dreamt up in this cluster-F.
Why 3 stars? This movie is so colossally incompetent, on every level, that I couldn't help but LOL through it all.
Alright, first problem with these movies are the bad dubs. And this one is an abortion. You've got Italian actors speaking English, dubbed back into American English. It certainly doesn't help that the dialogue was typed by a room full of monkeys, force fed a steady diet of the worst horror retreads imagineable (Oh, I can tell you the monkeys did watch Evil Dead, though). Did I mention they got Italian monkeys who don't speak English? To add insult to injury, hire six of the worst voice actors in the USA, to deliver these lines in the most stiff and stilted manner possible. Unbearable (or a laugh riot, you decide).
Here's what I could make of the story (no, read imdb's synopsis. It's hilarious). In 1898, some guy in Italy is married to an occult enthusiast. She summons a powerful witch, who's actually a demon, and either inhabits her body or possesses her. She kills the kids, and it's up to dad to contend with... his wife. He nails her to the ground, face-down in the crypt(?!) beneath their vast estate. Cut to the present day New York, where some dumb kid relative inherits the house (check). He takes his 5 friends with him to Italy, where unintelligible chaos ensues.
For tropes, you've got plenty of big hitters. I won't even go into them. So one of the moron's girlfriends goes into the crypt, cuts herself on a nail, bleeds on the ashes, and, well, you get it (I saw this one in Hellraiser). Only the witch takes the form of this girl... sometimes. Frankly, I not only couldn't tell who the witch was, she is constantly taking on different forms (yeah, go with the black veil based on your mood), but she is EVERYWHERE. On AND off the property. Even from scene to scene, location to location! There had to be 20 witches. Movie IMPLIES there's one, so ya got me.
Dumb kids making dumb decisions, check. They're supposedly isolated in the middle of a forest, at this huge estate. No one's cell has a signal, check. Late in the movie, one of the dumb kids decides it's time to call some specific detective on his cell phone. He gets cut off! Dumb buddy goes, What happened? (LOL). Toward the end of the movie, there are still 4 survivors. The witch likes to pop up, and when someone looks back, she's gone (trope, check). Or she pops up for a scare, then... end scene. So 3 of them are being chased around, one has slept through all the chaos. So the three of them (two guys, one girl, you can see where this is going) decide it's best to stick together. Ok, smart. Next scene, one guy goes to rescue the snoozer, and the other two run out the door into the forest! Then THEY decide to go back and check on the two guys upstairs. THEN dummy #1 decides the answer to this whole thing lies in his great uncle's diary, which was last seen... In the crypt! How many times have they split up here?
The reason given that they were trapped in the house (the van won't start, check), is that the house is surrounded by forest. Yet... they arrived in a van, on a road. Cut to the two survivors wildly running through the forest! What do these writers take me for? Sheesh, follow the road!
There's no less than 5 codas on the end of this trainwreck. They have the gall to pull a "It was all a dream," and then the dream was inside that dream (in one of which, out of the blue, the skinny goth chick gets naked... at the tail end of the movie). I'm assuming the glut of codas were reshoots because they had no idea how to end this thing, and finally talked her into it. The final coda implies there will be a sequel. Trope, and insulting.
Almost forgot, in an effort to make the movie "scary" when absolutely nothing was happening, they loaded this act with audio red herrings! So, the witch is dormant til those two idiots pay her a visit. In the meantime, there is a cavalcade of banging and crashing noises, along with sinister music cues(!), that all... lead to nothing. Pathetic.
For horror fans, not an exaggeration, this film belongs in the pantheon of cinematic trainwrecks and monumental failures such as Manos: The Hands of Fate, Troll 2, and The Room. Oh, BTW, let's call it "THE UNKIND." WTF.
I had no idea they still made these. Italian horror knockoffs. In the 70's and 80's, the Italians knocked off just about anything successful in horror or exploitation. Only they were specific! The Unkind, from 2021, is a knockoff of... Well, ya got me. One thing it is, is an endless string of horror movie tropes and cliches, some from seemingly totally unrelated movies (yes, there's even a scene where a ball rolls into a room! No reason). This movie is supposed to be about a witch? Or a demon? Or witches? Or demons? Or possession? I could not have eaten a box of Alpha Bits, and crapped a worse story and dialogue dreamt up in this cluster-F.
Why 3 stars? This movie is so colossally incompetent, on every level, that I couldn't help but LOL through it all.
Alright, first problem with these movies are the bad dubs. And this one is an abortion. You've got Italian actors speaking English, dubbed back into American English. It certainly doesn't help that the dialogue was typed by a room full of monkeys, force fed a steady diet of the worst horror retreads imagineable (Oh, I can tell you the monkeys did watch Evil Dead, though). Did I mention they got Italian monkeys who don't speak English? To add insult to injury, hire six of the worst voice actors in the USA, to deliver these lines in the most stiff and stilted manner possible. Unbearable (or a laugh riot, you decide).
Here's what I could make of the story (no, read imdb's synopsis. It's hilarious). In 1898, some guy in Italy is married to an occult enthusiast. She summons a powerful witch, who's actually a demon, and either inhabits her body or possesses her. She kills the kids, and it's up to dad to contend with... his wife. He nails her to the ground, face-down in the crypt(?!) beneath their vast estate. Cut to the present day New York, where some dumb kid relative inherits the house (check). He takes his 5 friends with him to Italy, where unintelligible chaos ensues.
For tropes, you've got plenty of big hitters. I won't even go into them. So one of the moron's girlfriends goes into the crypt, cuts herself on a nail, bleeds on the ashes, and, well, you get it (I saw this one in Hellraiser). Only the witch takes the form of this girl... sometimes. Frankly, I not only couldn't tell who the witch was, she is constantly taking on different forms (yeah, go with the black veil based on your mood), but she is EVERYWHERE. On AND off the property. Even from scene to scene, location to location! There had to be 20 witches. Movie IMPLIES there's one, so ya got me.
Dumb kids making dumb decisions, check. They're supposedly isolated in the middle of a forest, at this huge estate. No one's cell has a signal, check. Late in the movie, one of the dumb kids decides it's time to call some specific detective on his cell phone. He gets cut off! Dumb buddy goes, What happened? (LOL). Toward the end of the movie, there are still 4 survivors. The witch likes to pop up, and when someone looks back, she's gone (trope, check). Or she pops up for a scare, then... end scene. So 3 of them are being chased around, one has slept through all the chaos. So the three of them (two guys, one girl, you can see where this is going) decide it's best to stick together. Ok, smart. Next scene, one guy goes to rescue the snoozer, and the other two run out the door into the forest! Then THEY decide to go back and check on the two guys upstairs. THEN dummy #1 decides the answer to this whole thing lies in his great uncle's diary, which was last seen... In the crypt! How many times have they split up here?
The reason given that they were trapped in the house (the van won't start, check), is that the house is surrounded by forest. Yet... they arrived in a van, on a road. Cut to the two survivors wildly running through the forest! What do these writers take me for? Sheesh, follow the road!
There's no less than 5 codas on the end of this trainwreck. They have the gall to pull a "It was all a dream," and then the dream was inside that dream (in one of which, out of the blue, the skinny goth chick gets naked... at the tail end of the movie). I'm assuming the glut of codas were reshoots because they had no idea how to end this thing, and finally talked her into it. The final coda implies there will be a sequel. Trope, and insulting.
Almost forgot, in an effort to make the movie "scary" when absolutely nothing was happening, they loaded this act with audio red herrings! So, the witch is dormant til those two idiots pay her a visit. In the meantime, there is a cavalcade of banging and crashing noises, along with sinister music cues(!), that all... lead to nothing. Pathetic.
For horror fans, not an exaggeration, this film belongs in the pantheon of cinematic trainwrecks and monumental failures such as Manos: The Hands of Fate, Troll 2, and The Room. Oh, BTW, let's call it "THE UNKIND." WTF.