Writers: Dan DeLuca, James K. Jones & Ji-un Kwon
Released: 2006
Labels: Chiller|2000's
Six 'thirty-somethings' re-unite at a friends funeral. The will of their dead friend leads them on a mysterious trip of discovery ending up at an abandoned children's home where their inner-secrets and forgotten memories spill out...along with their blood!!!
This film opens with a few lines of text stating that ''between 1954 to 1976, nearly 600 children were voluntarily submitted for participation in a number of behavioral studies. These experimental facilities were privately funded and tucked away in secluded regions of the south. Families were paid a fee for their involvement, and were told the studies were harmless...Most of the children were never heard from again.'' We are then shown a sepia style flashback of a child being delivered into the hands of these scientists.
The problem with this opening is that it doesn't simply introduce the film and its subject matter, it completely blows apart any chance of a surprise twist or reveal by inadvertantly giving you all the history of our group of friends before the movie has even started. On second thought, maybe they had to add it after seeing the finished movie because the story has so many gaping plot-holes and is so disjointed; that without it, the viewer would have no clue whatsoever as to what the story is all about. Either way, the finished result is a mess.
Potentially it's an interesting (although not wholly original) premise. Kids that were incredibly emotionally scarred return to the place of abuse as adults. Sadly, the filmakers tried to load that premise with too many ideas and it becomes muddled and unbelievable. For example, our protagonists have collective amnesia about their childhood horrors. Really? All of them?? It's a series of incredibly clumsy plot devices that sees them end up locked (escape seems improbably difficult for some reason) inside the abandoned institute. It soon is revealed (totally unsurprisingly) that, whilst at this institute, as kids, this group also accidentally killed another of the children(?!?) and the spirit of this accidentally killed child stalks the group intent on (misplaced) revenge (???!)
It just doesn't work, and it isn't scary (apart from the creepiness of the spirit, that wasn't bad actually). One of the main themes of this movie is ''guilt'', the children in the institute are being ''taught'' guilt (god knows why), but after having delivered us this heap of incoherent nonsense, maybe the filmmakers should be the ones feeling guilty?
Crazy Eights Theatrical Trailer
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