Seventh Moon (2008) User Reviews

A Mediocre Supernatural/Horror Movie – or "What's the Point"

[MrHarley · 5/10 · 18 October 2009]

When this movie came out, I was genuinely hopeful. The concept of hungry ghosts is a central part of the tradition of Chinese Ancestor Worship, and had great potential for an excellent movie melding the supernatural and horror. The script writers even set it during an actual event in the Chinese year, a festival sharing much in common with the true traditions of All Hallows Eve. Unfortunately, that is as far as it went.

The film does not make the error that many movies make substituting gore for horror. There is enough blood to add to the suspense, and increase the tension that is central to this kind of movie. The script is serviceable. The protagonists never engage in the typical "how could they be so stupid" stereotypes of a true horror film. Their actions, at times foolish, were consistent with their characters as urban Americans enjoying their honeymoon in an exotic land. The actions of the other characters in the film are similarly plausible.

The problem is that the movie never really comes together. You vaguely like the young couple, and that's about it. You respect the actions of the only other real player in the movie towards the end, but I doubt he even has a total of ten minutes of screen time. The monsters are scary, and appropriately monstrous. None of this is the makings of great cinema.

My wife, upon the conclusion of the movie, asked me "What's the Point?" She meant it rhetorically, because we both had no trouble understanding what was going on during the movie. Yet that comment sums up succinctly my own reaction upon watching it. It wasn't a waste of 87 minutes of my life, and since the rental was free I don't feel ripped off. It's just very sad when this had the potential to be a very good movie.

A good concept, but a bit of a mess

[Heislegend · 5/10 · 20 November 2009]

I didn't know what to expect going into this. To be honest I had it in the back of my head that it would be just one more crappy Asian-style ghost story about some girl with long black hair. Luckily it was not, but it's still certainly not without it's faults.

OK, well to be fair this is *kind of* an Asian ghost story, but not the kind done to death since about 2000. It's based on the Chinese myth that under the full moon in the seventh month of the lunar year the dead can cross over to the land of the living. Fair enough...just like Halloween in some countries. But these things aren't some wussy little ghost...they're more like humanoid demons. So it scores some cool points for concept. Now for the bad news...

I'm not normally one to pick on technical aspects of a movie, but there are some pretty major problems here. First is the lighting, or rather the lack of it. Many parts of this movie are so dark that it's not even scary. You have no clue what's going on because you can't see a damn thing. And then there's the camera work. A good part of this is filmed with that shaky handicam. While that's something I'd expect from some fake documentary-style film (it's still annoying even then, but it's a bit more understandable), it's just about unacceptable to use it this much in a film like this. I suppose someone thought it would give a sense of terror or something to the movie. They were wrong. So basically you're left with a seemingly cool premise all but ruined by someone's attempt to make the film something that it wasn't. Truth be told, that kind of sucks. But in the end it's not too bad.

No Ancient Chinese Secret

[gregsrants · 4/10 · 31 October 2009]

Part of the Ghost House Underground DVD series, Seventh Moon is based on the Chinese legend that on the full moon of the seventh lunar month, the gates of hell open and the dead can enter the realm of the living.

The film opens in China where we are introduced to newlyweds Melissa and Yul (Amy Smart and Chiou) as they walk the streets of China acting as regular and normal as any tourist – taking in the culture and enjoying the ethnical differences.

When Melissa and Yul are left by their guide, Ping, in a remote ancient village, their night of terror takes them through puzzling occurrences and face to face with some ghastly creatures.

As with most horrors, the tension and the events that lead to eventual terror takes time to build. It starts with their car being splattered with blood while the couple were investigating outside of the village. Smartly, the couple don't' try and stay to figure out why they were targeted. Instead, they get in their car and try and hi-tail it out of dodge. But when a mysterious figure runs in front of their vehicle driving them off the road, Amy and Yul are soon on foot trying to evade the deadly beings that are in pursuit.

Seventh Moon is directed by Eduardo Sánchez who directed The Blair Witch Project in 1999 and the under appreciated Altered in 2006. Sánchez emulates his Blair Witch debut by shooting Seventh Moon with hand-held cameras and quick edits. This can get awfully annoying if you are not in the mood for unsteady camera work.

Although the atmosphere and the intense mood of the film gets high marks, the film fails by not offering anything new to the genre. Spooky as it was at times, the shaky camera doesn't allow the audience to get to know the characters as well as a steady-cam. It is bad enough that the setting all takes place at night where visibility is poor to begin with. Couple the setting with the constant shaking and un-centered camera efforts, and there isn't any time for emotional investment amongst all the other distractions to care whether the two leads live or die.

The first half being watchable and the second half evoking a 'please-hurry-I-have-things-to-do' response, Seventh Moon (which copied way too much from The Descent) is just average. And in this genre, that just doesn't cut it.

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Did they film this in a closet - on a merry-go-round??

[jk90us · 1/10 · 16 January 2011]

Here's what I'm guessing: The only film production term the director (LOL) of this POS ever learned was EXTREME CLOSE UP. Because that's all he BLEEPING shot! His "style" (LOL) of film making is to shove a hand held camera right into the face of each actor in every single scene. So all we ever see (or barely see) are noses, parts of their eyes, some hair, a chin, maybe an ear.

At least, I think that's what they were -- because the idiot kept shaking the BLEEPING camera while he did it. I thought Paul Greengrass was bad with all his crappy BS cocaine-pumped, hypersonic, epileptic, motion sickness style (LOL) of film making. But the guy who made this film makes him look like he's standing still and filming in slow motion.

And for all I know, they could have made this entire movie inside a closet. Not once did I see a wide shot or even a background in any of the scenes. Just close ups of faces. Nothing but faces. They almost showed some wide shots a couple of times, but then the director either set it out of focus or had weeds, trees or some other object obscure the shot.

BTW, the IMDb page states that Amy Smart is in this. IS SHE? All I saw were strands of blonde hair and tired looking eyes flashing past the camera every once in a while. I still have NO idea who it was. It could have been Paris Hilton. Who the hell knows?

Also, anyone know what the ghosts looked like in this thing? Because I have NO BLEEPING idea! All I saw (or sorta saw) were extreme out of focus close ups of something bald and white. That's it. I think. Still not sure.

Unless you like being totally confused AND extremely irritated, avoid this flick at all costs!!

Absolutely terrible

[Leofwine_draca · 2/10 · 7 May 2018]

SEVENTH MOON is another missed opportunity from director Eduardo Sanchez, the man who brought us THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT back in 1999. It's quickly becoming obvious that Sanchez was a one-hit wonder and his subsequent movies have been forgettable at best. This is the worst I've seen from him, a stupid, all but plotless exercise in would-be scares, in which a miscast Amy Smart and her husband head off to China during the 'hungry ghost' festival. They encounter spirits and malignant beings while there, but the whole thing is shot in near pitch blackness so more often than not you have no idea what's going on. It's just two actors, a camera, and jumps here and there. Smart's incessant screaming becomes wearisome early on and the film just goes on and on and on without ending, so it's a good cure for insomnia. I'm afraid I hated every minute of it.

Unwatchable-literally

[arutha10002 · 2/10 · 23 June 2014]

Someone is a fan of shaky-cam (or just couldn't afford a steady cam). But not content with annoying the audience with shaky cam, nonsensical jump-cuts were added to not only make the audience nauseated, but annoyed as well. Half the movie is close-ups of people's faces and the other half of the movie is too dark to see anything. Very bad.

The story itself is nothing special. I was looking forward to it because I learned all about "Ghost Month" in Taiwan. The 7th lunar month is when spirits from the netherworld can come and cause mischief in our world, thus all the burning stuff to placate those spirits. It was more annoying than scary, interesting, or suspenseful.

Shaky Cam Strikes Again

[randylanders · 10 February 2011]

I'm not sure why there's this horrible fondness as of late for using hand-held steadycams, but it certainly makes an almost unwatchable mess of what is a very good story, very good acting, and seemingly a good production.

The story itself is an engaging one: honeymooners trapped in remote China with the undead seeking their lives. It's strongly steeped in Chinese mysticism, and had me from the get go.

The acting was really good. I'd never have thought someone like Amy Smart could pull off a role like this, and she did a great job.

Unfortunately, the use of shaky cam just detracts so much from the movie that parts of it are almost incomprehensible. Directors need to realize that this particular technique is being OVERDONE and makes for really bad cinema.

Hopefully this trend will soon fade... Otherwise you can't help but wonder how many more movies will be ruined by this technique.

Hellish Honeymoon

[claudio_carvalho · 4/10 · 31 August 2010]

In accordance with the Chinese Myth, on the full moon of the seventh lunar month, the gates of hell open and the spirits of the dead are freed to roam among the living.

Melissa (Amy Smart) and her husband Yul (Tim Chiou) are spending their honeymoon in the month of the ghosts in China, where they intend to visit his relatives. They participate in the Senwun (Ghost Festival) during the day, where they drink a lot of booze, and their driver Ping (Dennis Chan) heads to Anxian when the nights falls. A couple of hours later, Ping parks his car and tells that he is lost. He asks the couple to wait for him in his car while he asks for directions in a small village in the countryside. One hour later, Melissa and Yul decide to seek out Ping in the village, and they see the houses closed with live offering and the locals saying something in Cantonese. Yul does not understand what they are saying and the couple returns to the car and drive away trying to find the way back to the city. Sooner they meet a stranger, Wei, wounded on the road and Melissa decides to help the man. They are attacked by creepy creatures and they discover that the spirits of the dead are hunting the living. Melissa and Yul try to find a way to protect themselves and survive the hellish night.

"Seventh Moon" is a forgettable low-budget horror movie with a reasonable story and basically four characters only. Unfortunately the camera work is awful, with excessive use of closes and blurred while showing the fiends, maybe due to the limited budget for special effects. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "A Maldição da Sétima Lua" ("The Curse of the 7th Moon")

There's a reason Seventh Moon never caught on

[CharlesTisMe · 1/10 · 3 September 2009]

This is easily one of the worst movies I have ever seen, ever.

Like the user comment before mine, I saw it at Fantastic Fest, an annual must of film festivals, and one year later with 09's fest about to start - I am still compelled to urge people not to waste two hours of their life on this nearly unwatchable waste of celluloid.

The pacing is awful, the action is laughable, and it all culminates in one of the silliest, most disappointing endings Fantastic Fest has ever been privy to. Plus the camera-work is nauseatingly distracting.

There is nothing redeemable about this movie. Exit your browser now and forget you ever heard of it.

Good movie

[MattJaa · 7/10 · 3 October 2009]

Despite reading a couple of bad reviews I decided to give this movie a try and I'm glad I did. Some people may feel that the effects weren't terribly good but they didn't need to be; this movie was more about suspense. It's not a slasher movie, it's a movie with a story. It was definitely worth the watch. I was on the edge of my seat a several times, it was quite suspenseful and that's what I like in a scary movie. The acting needs some work but it wasn't so distracting that it took away from the story. There were a couple of times that left me scratching my head in confusion but overall a good movie. Give it a shot, not a bad way to spend an hour and a half.

Rubbish

[Stevieboy666 · 2/10 · 1 June 2018]

American couple spend their honeymoon in China but get duped into becoming sacrifices to "Moon Demons". One pet hate of mine is shaky cam and here we have a terrible example. But not only that, the picture is often too dark so see what is going on plus it often blurs. Headache inducing. Plus plot wise it's very minimal. Poor effort.

Ancient Chinese Secret....

[raegan_butcher · 8/10 · 13 December 2009]

Amy Smart and Tim Chiou are a vacationing couple in China. Dennis Chan is their smiling tour guide. After a brief credit-sequence he drives them to a remote rural area and vanishes. The two Americans are stranded in the countryside. Suspicious villagers,duplicitous taxi drivers and hungry "moon demons" figure into the rest of the tale.

This is two thirds a good movie, because the last act is a bit weak. But for the most part this is a superior little chiller. Spooky use of sound, silence and darkness.Some have complained of the hand-held camera-work but I was not bothered by it.Along with ALTERED, this is the best film from Eduardo Sanchez.

Do Chinese demons think of Americans as exotic food?

[siderite · 6/10 · 16 August 2010]

This movie isn't original, but it does what it was set to do: scare people. Unfortunately, it is such a continuous cliché that I could not get enjoyment out of it, and that means it failed.

The plot is as simple as possible: Cute blonde with blue eyes goes to China with her Chinese fiancée, but one that is tall and talking with an American accent and probably stepping foot for the first time in China. they are terribly happy, she is all smiles and laughter and save the planet and all. She even gives expensive gifts to their Chinese driver.

Fast forward a few minutes later when they are lost in their cab in some remote Chinese village, with no driver in sight and a pint of blood poured over the car and they are not happy anymore. They drive like idiots, shout at each other, cursing and panicking. Who would have thought that those words could come out of that cute little blond mouth?

A few minutes later, white skinned demons probably related to the monsters in Descent are hunting them and so they are driving even worse, shouting even louder and cursing even worse. The demons aren't happy either.

Bottom line: if this would have appeared in 2000, it would have been a good movie. In the 90's it would have been brilliant, even if we had all those cannibal hillbilly movies in the American wilderness. I guess Chinese actors are simply cheaper. And so did this movie feel now, in 2010.

Another good movie ruined by shaky camera

[usn27 · 2/10 · 13 December 2009]

I just finished watching this movie. The story was decent, the acting was actually pretty good, and, unlike most horror movies coming out these days, it didn't look like it was shot on home video.

However, the camera work in this movie absolutely killed it for me. I already can't stand the 'shaky cam' technique when its in documentary style movies, but seeing it in any other style of movie really aggravates me. The lighting in this movie is horrible, the camera shakes so much you can't see what's going on, and its constantly zoomed in so close to everything that you can't make out much of anything when the camera *isn't* shaking all over the place.

Not one time do you get a clear shot of the ghosts. A pretty good movie, but in my opinion the camera work completely ruined it. One step above awful.

Seventh Moon

[vibe-38915 · 5/10 · 21 November 2020]

The main horror of this film is the horrible shaky cam !

Even even Amy Smart's preternaturally cute nose couldn't save this!

[Weirdling_Wolf · 2/10 · 28 January 2021]

The ceaselessly frenetic photography, the hurried editing and distracting abundance of hellaciously hectic running scenes frequently went waaaaay beyond my eye-brain comfort zone and even Amy Smart's preternaturally cute nose couldn't remedy the actively abrasive look of 'Seventh Moon'. But hey, what do I know, I'm just a reactionary schmendrick who still likes to see the scary monsters in a monster movie!

Oh, Waiter, We'll Have the Moo Goo Gai Pan and the Horror.

[rmax304823 · 4/10 · 16 July 2010]

I'm unable to watch this all the way through because the jiggling camera induced a migraine of Biblical proportions, but the pattern is clear anyway.

Two honeymooners, Tim Chiou and Amy Smart, are being driven by an older man named Ping to a remote village but Ping gets lost and stops the car in a spot that is close to a haunted village, or so he says. He leaves the car to get direction and disappears.

Chiou and Smart squirm with impatience and finally exit the vehicle themselves to retrieve Ping. The structures in the village are all dark, as is everything else, and the only light comes from Chiou's flashlight.

I give the film points for its attempt at hybridization, crossing the cheap American horror movie with a Chinese milieu. I also give it points for being brave enough to try such a stunt on a budget that would not have provided a month's worth of gerbil food.

And that's about it. It doesn't appear to me that the dialog was more than just sketched in. Much of the dialog sounds improvised, in the way that John Cassavetes' dialog was improvised, a way that never held any appeal for me -- "What do you mean?" "What do you mean, 'what do you mean?'" Sometimes improvisation can be successfully pulled off when you're using someone who knows his business. Try Marlon Brando in "Last Tango in Paris." But here, neither of the two principles is able to pull it off.

And that wobbling, hand-held camera! I curse the day MTV was born.

Really nothing special

[ncere · 5/10 · 5 October 2009]

I must disagree with everybody who has written a review here ( 3 people to be precise ),and I will try to explain why it is like that.

First of all,to the all the people who have commented about this title I must ask a simple question: Did anyone of you ever watched more than two horror movies in your life?

So the movie is about old Chinese myth that turns out to be real and not a myth at all.The story is very simple and not very original.I have expected more of Eduardo Sanches since I liked ,,Altered,,.And to wait three years for something so average was certainly a disappointment.( Don't get me wrong,I don't think ,,altered,, the greatest movie of all time,but despite budget limitations and a few plot holes it was quite enjoyable and fun little b-movie).

The acting by Amy and Tim was OK,but my biggest problem was the look of moon demons( they were quite lame and ordinary in my opinion ).Some scenes at the end of the movie were a total ripoff of Descent by Neil Marshall.

Overall,this movie can be told in 2 minutes( I mean the story and everything that happens from the beginning to the end ).So the biggest problem of this movie is,like I said before,that it is so average it's painful.

While this certainly isn't the worst movie I have seen,it isn't the best one either.You won't be missing anything if you don't watch it,and if you do you'll say : Oh,well nothing special.

So since this is just an average movie I will give it an average grade 5 of 10.

P.S. Also for a horror movie,this flick isn't scary at all.

Butchering of Chinese cultural beliefs

[tigakub · 1/10 · 4 January 2010]

If the writer/director had bothered to properly research the Chinese Ghost Festival on which this is SUPPOSED to be based, and actually provided some exposition that accurately portrayed the true Chinese belief this could have been a great film. The real myth has the potential to be so much scarier and disturbing than anything in this film. What the hell are those naked people painted in blue supposed to be? Those aren't based on anything in the Chinese belief. Apart from it being in the seventh lunar month, nothing in this film is accurate AT ALL! There are no "moon demons" in the legend! And they certainly don't go around abducting people. And the Chinese put out offerings not to appease hostile spirits, but to welcome the spirits of loved ones who were released from the netherworld to come to visit on this one night every year. Naturally, there can be a lot of scary elements to this myth. I just wish that the director had actually used some of them. But he didn't. He should stick to stuff he knows, or is willing to spend time researching, rather than taking liberties with another culture and doing it ALL WRONG. The only scary thing about this film is how xenophobic it is. Make up some bogus myth and attach "Chinese" to it to capitalize on the audience's willingness to demonize anything that is "other." Cheap.

Maybe two points for using actors who could actually speak Cantonese without accents. But minus one for running subtitles that didn't match what they were actually saying.

here's a bright idea!

[smoke0 · 2 September 2019]

Let's make most of the film so dark and so full of shaky cam closeups that it looks just like a found footage film, but let's not actually make a found footage film!

Interesting, but lost it's way

[ericmcmillan · 6/10 · 18 April 2010]

I originally gave this move a seven, but then changed my mind after having fallen asleep TWICE trying to watch this film.

The movie began well enough: newlywed Americans in China enjoying the sights and sounds of the region. They get a little tipsy, have their guide drive them back to their resort only for the driver to become "lost" along the way. The driver looks for directions in the middle of the night and does not return. The couple goes to the little town and are haunted by the darkness, the voices, and the animals left out for sacrifice.

Then they come; the moon demons(?), undead, "zombies"... whatever you call them they are scary. The couple come across a man, injured, along the road and decide to take him with them. The undead follow them to a small town and seek them out.

All of this is interesting: dead people chasing down alive people to satisfy their hunger for fresh flesh (hence, the animals for sacrifice), a young couple who are lost and must depend upon each other, a protagonist in the group who'd rather deal you out to the undead in order to save his life... then it all goes to Hell.

The movie lost it's way when the couple find a house where all of these people are just standing around. The couple then drink something, have sex, and wake up in cages. Now, they are sacrifices. I fell asleep here, twice... this sequence of events totally disrupted the viewing of this movie and ruined it for me.

When I awoke, the girl was in a cave system (i.e., The Descent) and gets away, after seeing her husband become one of them.

Up until the house scene, this movie had a lot of potential. It was whithered away by changing the action so abruptly.

I'd give it no stars!!!!!

[dariomarkotic · 1/10 · 18 March 2018]

A couple of hours ago I watched this movie on TV. I thought a horror flick would be something I'd enjoy and started watching this "masterpeice".

Umm I had no idea what was happening. I honestly thought my Cable company was pulling my chain by showing me a DivX port from an pirated cinema viewing.

I did some investigating watched few clips on youtube and fuck me The whole thing is genuenly someones attempt at cinematography. It's horrific and I'm confused how something THIS bad can be released for someone to enjoy it, seeing it here, the amount of stars that it has made me question people's sanity.

The WORST movie experience I've ever had. Screw the director.

Smartly made horror film with a few issues here and there

[squirrel_burst · 8/10 · 18 April 2015]

"Seventh Moon" is an effective little horror film that does a good job creating paranoia and delivers a good amount of scares. Melissa (Amy Smart) and Yul (Tim Chiou), are honeymooning in China to visit Yul's parents when they get lost in the countryside and end up in a small remote village. Their misfortune coincides with the night of the Seventh Moon, which, in accordance with Chinese Myth means that the gates of hell open and the dead can enter the world of the living.

It's a scary ghost movie that gets the basics right. It stays with a small cast of characters so you can get to know and care about them, It keeps its cards close to the chest to keep you interested and ensure your Imagination plays with some of the quiet moments too. I thought the creature designs were very effective because they are simple, but in a way that is unsettling because you don't quite know what to make of them (unlike say, someone running around with an ax; I might not know what the deal with the person is, but I know what bit to avoid there). I was kept in suspense as to who was going to bite the dust, if anyone and I liked how for the most part you don't see much, except in the shadows until the very end. Once again, letting your imagination play tricks on you and make the terror even more intense. Your imagination can run a little wild while the characters are trying just as hard as you are to figure out who or what is chasing them. While there are a few moments at the end that aren't totally effective, and throughout the movie there are stretches that are poorly shot (to the point where you'll be frantically trying to figure out what exactly is going) it genuinely scared me. That's the objective, it met It's goal and I think you will enjoy it too. There are some good surprises and plenty of fresh material within the frightening "Seventh Moon". (On DVD, November 11, 2012)

Seventh Moon Of A Seventh Moon...

[loogenhausen · 6/10 · 8 November 2011]

Eduardo Sanchez is emerging as the more talented of the Blair Witch directing duo. The other, Daniel Myrick, helmed the disappointments The Believers and Solstice but rebounded with the interesting The Objective. After the enjoyable but slightly uneven Altered, Sanchez follows up with the creepy but flawed Seventh Moon. Really the only thing that keeps this from being a four star flick is the overabundance of unnecessary shaky cam tactics. In the Blair Witch it was tolerable, but here it makes no sense. We can clearly see the creatures attacking our main characters several times during the movie, so there's no need to employ all the shaky cam shenanigans to try to disorient the viewer. Besides that, everything else is quite effective. The remote locale is pretty spooky and you really do feel like you could be hopelessly lost in a place like that. Sanchez is great at this motif and it was present in Blair Witch and somewhat in Altered. Amy Smart screaming at the top of her lungs does get old after a little bit, but it doesn't distract too much from a fun but forgettable little foray into indie horror.

Nauseating camera shake. Piece of crap.

[goldenboy_1024 · 1/10 · 7 October 2009]

Well the title says it all. If you are one of those who find camera shakes annoying then you'll be in for a party here. I really don;t know why some idiot directors have to film their movies this way. Eduardo Sanchez himself said that Seventh moon is a low budget trip to hell.

An American couple take their honeymoon in China. You see it's the groom's homeland (Tim Chiou, L.A. Proper), although he grew up in America mainly speaking English. His wife (Amy Smart, Crank) is just along to meet the ancestors. One night their tour guide (Dennis Chan, Knock Off) mysteriously strands them in a field near a very creepy cemetery adjacent to a village, with ritualistic sacrifices littering the ground. Soon the couple tries to flee, but a car accident where they hit a man stops them. The hurt Chinese villager barely croaks out "They're coming! They're here!" and soon everybody is attacked by creepy white Asian zombies. And so begins a bizarre chase as a pair of Americans have to fight their way across the Chinese countryside while being pursued by something evil that wants to eat them