Grim Reaper 2007

Grim Reaper released in 2007 stars Cherish Lee as Rachel, Brent Fidler as Dr. Brown and Benjamin Pitts as Liam.

Death comes for us all, but after surviving a car crash that should have taken her life, Rachel Wilson finds herself stalked by the Grim Reaper himself intending on talking a soul he feels he is owed.

Rachel is a stripper and as the movie begins, we see her working. After she’s done, she calls her boyfriend Liam to tell him she’s on the way home. The two get into a semi-quarrel and she hangs up. An ominous voice calls to her but when she turns to look, there’s no one there. She walks down the alley but occasionally glances back. As she takes one last look over her should, a taxi cab speeds out of the dark and hits her. She stumbles to her feet while the driver stumbles out of the car and then collapses on the ground.

Rachel is taken to the hospital but all she wants to do is to go home. Later as a nurse is treating her, she remarks that she can’t find her pulse. Rachel freaks out by this realization and as the nurse leaves to find a doctor, Rachel leaves in the other direction. When Rachel walks by a darken room, she hears a noise and goes inside. Inside the room, there is a second room and Rachel sees the cab driver. As she watches, the driver is attacked and killed by an ominous figure wearing a cloak and carrying a scythe (the grim reaper.)

Rachel runs back into the hallway and straight into the nurse that was tending her. She tries to tell the nurse what she saw, but the nurse tells her, “There’s no boogey man in there, my darling girl. There’s nothing to be afraid of.” Then the nurse drugs Rachel and she collapses.

Rachel wakes up in a strange place. The windows and door has bars – all of them are locked while Liam goes to Rachel’s work looking for her since she didn’t come home the night before. As Rachel grows more desperate inside the room, the door is suddenly opened and Dr. Brown walks in and tells her she’s at St. Joseph. He has a taser. After Dr. Brown introduces the other resident at St. Joseph, Rachel tries to tell him that her life is in danger. “We’re all in danger. We all got to go sometime.”

Rachel learns that the other residents all survivors. They have cheated death somehow and now death is coming for them. Stewart is one of the first victims and Rachel is the only one to witness his death. But when she tries to tell Dr. Brown what she saw, he tasers her.

Eventually Nick comes to her aide and the two make their escape. When they take Dr. Brown hostage, he tries to tell them that they are all part of a group hypnosis experiment. But when the grim reaper shows up again, it’s Tia that meets her gruesome end not with a whimper but by a deathly shock.

As Nick and Rachel search for a way out, they run into Dr. Brown again. This time he tells them that he made a deal with the Reaper. If the Reaper would let him live, he would collect the souls he should have reaped with a little help from his wife…the nurse.

Rachel discovers that there’s a way to change their fate (does this sound familiar?) but Dr. Brown doubts she is willing to pay the price. All the while Rachel is talking with Dr. Brown, the Reaper is collecting his lost souls…until there is only one…Nick. But even death comes to Nick as the Reaper cuts him in half just as Liam finds Rachel. The two run out of the room and Rachel tells Liam that the only way to get out is for her to die.

Although Liam objects, he helps Rachel by injecting her with a serum to induce death. And when Rachel dies, she’s able to go back and change her fate…maybe.

You might not be able to cheat death, but Grim Reaper could have used some lights. I know when you don’t have the blockbuster budget, lighting can be expensive, but this movie was so under lit that it was hard to tell if it was budgetary or ambience. Either way, it was way too dark. Even though I enjoyed this movie and thought the creep factor was definitely in this movie, I’m giving this one 2 bloody stumps out of 5. It really would have nice to actually see what I was watching.