Director – Sean Donohue (Death-Scort Service, The Hart-Break Killer)
Starring – Arius West (The Curious Case of Jeff Jefferson), Kylie Remlinger, and Martin Grobisen (Seeing Red, If I Can’t Have You…)
Release Date – 2019
Rating – 2.5/5
Halloween is quickly approaching and I’m spending all my free time watching as many horror movies as possible. So far this month I’m up to 37 written reviews with 39 movies watched. I’m pretty sure this is the most I’ve watched in half a month. As I dive deeper and deeper into October I find myself checking out some pretty cool indie horror flicks that I had never seen before.
A few days back director Sean Donohue of Gatorblade Films reached out to me to check out his newest film Dead Residence. Sean is a director I greatly admire and I could never turn down one of his films. Thanks Sean for reaching out to me to check this one out!
**Spoiler Alert**The film follows a young couple who are ready to buy their own house. They do some looking online and find the perfect fixer upper in their price range. They contact the realtor and meet him in the home. The look it over and fall in love with it. Before long they are moving in with grand dreams of fixing it up for their own. Things take a dark twist that night when the security camera spots someone prowling the property. Soon their ideal home is looking for like a home that a squatter was hiding in and matter take an even more gruesome turn when a flash drive with videos of people being tortured in that very home. When the realtor refuses to return their calls they are soon face to face with the mysterious man and they become the stars of his newest video.**Spoiler Alert**
I hate when a filmmaker that I’ve made friends with over the years sends me something to review and I don’t like it. I always feel like I’m being a dick but the harsh truth is a filmmaker will never knock it out of the park 100% of the time. Remember, Romero had Bruiser. Dead Residence is NOT a bad movie but it is a movie I just couldn’t get behind.
The acting in this one is decent for the most part but the cast does have some room to grow. The characters are extremely cliched but they fit the found footage theme of the film.
The story for this one would be fucking amazing as a straight forward horror film but told in the found footage manner it loses it’s impact. The killer living in the attack killing everyone that moves in is fucking creepy as fuck and uses real life horrors to work. With that being said, the impact is lost when we watch the two stars of the film small talk for 45 minutes or longer before we get to the good stuff. The story is extremely drawn out which will try your patience.
Finally, the film isn’t as bloody as you come to expect from Donohue and company but we do get a few scenes where we get some blood. The effects are minimal but do work in the found footage favor. Overall, Dead Residence isn’t a film for me but I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a fan of found footage. The movie has a story that could work and the movie is pieced together in a manner that if you liked found footage flicks you would enjoy but it just wasn’t for me.
