Séance (2006)
7/10
Better than it should be but still somewhat flawed
9 December 2014
Staying in their dorm over a weekend break, a group of students find that a ghostly girl haunting the area is only the start of their troubles when they inadvertently release a ghostly killer into the building.

This was quite an enjoyable if somewhat flawed effort that gets held down somewhat. One of the biggest issues with this one is the fact that there's never any real indication given that the killer is all that scary, as he's quite lame-looking and never does anything that can really be called creepy. The only remotely chilling option here is the flickering ability generated when he appears and disappears, yet none of those scenes are competently pulled off to make the scenes worthwhile, and when the killer here is completely non-scary it doesn't bode well for the film as a whole since the central figure required to generate the scares in your chilling film doesn't meet those standards. That also ties in with the film being so slow-paced and generally unwilling to really showcase the killer which leaves this one to spend a large portion of time not really doing much of anything. We get a particularly long period of time between the titular event and the first appearance of the killer to them, which makes this one feel like an eternity before it gets good. The good stuff does come here in the final half when the gang finally learns the truth about what they're up against and how to finally stop it which soon devolves into a series of chases, confrontations and body-hopping which is all sorts of fun as the action is pretty enjoyable and the kills are pretty bloody. The other effort that really helps this one out is the rather clever ideology this one has regarding the paranormal nature of what goes on here. The central idea to use a séance to contact the individual around them is all quite fine, but then to go around and introduce the idea of using the Quija board and how erroneous their thinking was in using it is the best since they eventually learn how wrong they were and how it impacts the resulting massacre throughout here. That's one of the best qualities here and really helps this one out from it's flaws.

Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, Brief Nudity, drug use and themes of child abuse.
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