The Crying Dead (2011)

The Crying Dead: Directed by Hunter G. Williams. With Chris Hayes, Jeff Stearns, Becka Adams, Angelina Lyubomirova. This film tells the horrifying story of the cast and crew of a new reality TV show investigating the paranormal. When the team is denied access to the Ettersburg hospital, they decide to sneak in and explore at night. Ettersburg hospital, believed to be haunted after the tragic death years before of three young girls burned alive in an apparent accident is to be the pilot episode. What starts out as an uneventful evening exploring the dark halls of the expansive hospital, turns into a fear filled nightmare when one of their team goes missing. As the team separates to search for their missing friend, they find themselves running for their lives as one after the other they fall victim to the hospital and its crying dead.

“These found footage, first person spookhouse movies generally work on me if theyu0026#39;re done halfway well. I loved The Blair Witch Project and Grave Encounters really had me going (despite some overtly goofy CGI effects). The Crying Dead also had me most of the way there but then lost me when the spooks came out. IMO thereu0026#39;s two big problems that deflate the scares. One is the ghosts. They just arenu0026#39;t that scary. Three little girls, in Halloween facepaint, double-exposed as they traipse about in the dark hallways. Kinda spooky but not very. Despite some early implications that these arenu0026#39;t normal kids they donu0026#39;t behave very strangely or look very menacing (nothing like the ghouls in the poster image). I really think they needed an additional layer of bizarre to them… a hint at something… other. The second problem, for me, was the editing… or pacing of the movie. The movie starts off with a scene that sets up the threat, but itu0026#39;s on the verge of laughable because itu0026#39;s just so overt so early on. There are also scenes from later in the movie that are repeated early on during the slow stuff… I think to assure impatient viewers that there is some action coming. This wouldnu0026#39;t bother me as much in a regular film but it doesnu0026#39;t fit the found footage conceit here… particularly since those scenes are duplicates of later footage. In a way the film plays its hand in these early scenes and the rest is just going through the motions. Sadly, the nature of the haunting just isnu0026#39;t very imaginative… nothing beyond ghostly little girls with u0026#39;powerzu0026#39;. Once they show up itu0026#39;s just rinse and repeat… they donu0026#39;t get any weirder or scarier than when we first saw them, early on. They really needed something more.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eDespite those two points I still kinda enjoyed the movie. It did have me on edge at times, just by the nature of how it was filmed… the suspense is good even if the payoff is lame. The actors did a great job with what little they were given… all my gripes are with the writing/editing.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eOne other thing Iu0026#39;ll mention… the music in the closing credits is the same sort of generic heavy metal that a hundred other horror movies toss in. I think it would have left the audience with a bit more of a after-scare if something more creepy and subtle had been used… something that carried on the mood of the film rather than blaringly contradicting it.”