You fooled me, Queen of Spades, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to let that go. It seems that every horror movie that’s come out recently is either a remake, a zombie flick, or a story that deals with demonic possession. I’m bored with it all and I’m looking for something new. When I found Queen of Spades on Amazon Instant Video, I was super excited because the premise sounded like an updated version of the popular Blood Mary tale. It stayed that way, for a while, and then it dove off the deep end into unwelcome territory and that, for me, ruined the overall story. Here’s my review anyway.
Queen of Spades is written and directed by Svyatoslav Podgayevskiy. Filmed in the country of Russia and presented with subtitles, it stars Alina Babak, Igor Khripunov, Evgeniya Loza, Vladimir Seleznyov, Valeriya Dmitrieva, Sergey Pokhodaev and Valentin Sadiki. The film follows four teenagers who summon the Queen of Spades, a supernatural entity who travels through reflective surfaces, and the disastrous consequences the childhood game has on their lives. After taking the life of one of the teens, it becomes clear that the Queen is real and she’s after the youngest one in the group, whose family will do anything and everything to keep her safe…even going as far as to hire an exorcist to help in the unholy battle.
So, yeah, the Queen of Spades had my attention at the start because of the villains similarities to Bloody Mary, a scary story I’ll always be impartial to. Standing around with your friends, separated from your parents alone at night, candles lit, reciting an incantation in front of a mirror to summon something that might kill you. We’ve all done it. If it wasn’t Bloody Mary, it was someone else, but we we’ve all done it. I think that’s another reason why I decided to stream this movie – it made me recall exciting evenings I spent with my friends as a child. And, Hell, this is what they could have looked like had these stories turned out to me anything more than fiction! However, Queen of Spades has a different dynamic than other titles of the same nature because once shit starts to hit the fan, the adults come running in to save the day and become just as big a part of the plot as the teens who summoned the Queen. It takes a little bit of the magic away, but it adds a different look to it, too, and has much more of an emotional pull.
Being that Queen of Spades was filmed in Russia by a Russian cast and crew, it stands out from a cultural standpoint. Locations are obviously not from the US. Architecture is different, the food is different, the language is different; yet the clothes and technology remain the same. You have to use subtitles to watch Queen of Spades and, luckily, that doesn’t harm the viewing experience at all because the actors are so good you’re able to interpret what’s going on just from their faces and tone of voice. Quite rarely do I find a movie whose subtitles were as un-distracting as this one. I love that the filmmakers decide to keep the cinematography dark and depressing as it kept up with the overall mood of the film. Even during the day the scenes seem to have a dark yellow or orangey filter to them. This, among many other things, kept the suspense sky high. There isn’t any blood or gore and there’s no nudity, but Queen of Spades wins the hand with pulse racing suspense and all of the other tricks of a good scary movie including jump scares and characters breaking the rules. It was fun without being over the top.
Again, the only thing that kept Queen of Spades from being a good movie and a great movie is that the plot plummets into something entirely by 75% through the movie. Something I didn’t want. It becomes more of a film about demonic possession with the Queen taking on the appearance of the girl from The Grudge meeting the lady from Mama meeting the countess from Stay Alive. I didn’t want a film about demonic possession. I’m so, so tired of it. Developing the backstory of the Queen was unneeded and subtracted from her presence a little bit, but making her into a creature that wanted to possess a host took away her pizzazz all together. Every once in a while, keeping it simple is key. Final Score: 6.25 out of 10.
