FADING IN THE CRIES - *

Directed by Brian Metcalf. Starring Brad Dourif, Thomas Ian Nicholas and Jordan Matthews. Horror/Fantasy, USA. 2011. Certificate 15.

Released on DVD 30th May 2011.

Do you remember back in the 90’s when we had more and more supernatural TV dramas? You know the kind of shows that spawned from TV shows such as Buffy and Charmed? Well watching FADING IN THE CRIES was like sitting thorough the worst of these TV series. With blurry demons, god awful acting and a screenplay which would have worked better if you had split it into two different films. In this day and age of film making there isn’t really any excuse to have all of those bad aspects in one film. FADING IN THE CRIES also stars Brad Dourif (CHILDS PLAY, CHAIN LETTER) which has disappointed me no end as he has been in same damn good films throughout his career. Ok so down to why I hated this film so much.

When you have demons involved in a film you expect at least a little bit of effort on the costume front (okay granted the white skinned demon looked ok however what is up with the cloaked kid with the mini scythes?). Our young hero (played by talentless young actor named Jordan Matthews) looks like a member of an emo rock band and his sword wielding skills are bloody awful to say the least. The supposed heroin Sarah (played by a seriously dull and untalented youngster Hallee Hirsh) lacks any kind of appeal whatsoever and I swear if she was up against a horde of zombies in any other kind of horror film she would have been taken out by those flesh eaten fiends in the opening massacre.

So here we go with the plot. In pursuit of a mystical necklace, Mathias (Brad Dourif), an evil (yeah right) sorcerer, puts a spell on a small town, turning the residents into zombie like creatures. As you can probably already guess that our Heroin, Sarah, is in possession of said necklace leading to her family being attacked by the creatures. Sarah is saved by Jacob (Our little Emo friend) a sword wielding teenage looking for vengeance for his own family’s death. Meanwhile Sarah’s mother and her sister are fighting off the zombie horde (Which to be honest is the best part of the film) leading to the introduction to a creepy white skinned demon woman sent by Mathias. Sarah and Jacob join forces to break the curse placed on her family by Mathias with a half arsed excuse for a sword battle near the end between Jacob and Mathias.

Over the years I have seen so many lower budget horror films that I have actually enjoyed and on reading the plot of this film I was actually excited in watching it. Watching this made me feel like I had wasted a good hour or so of my life. The film basically lacked in good acting. The only positive in can give is the soundtrack which was pretty cool. I think that if this story was for a younger age, and you take out some of the (fake looking) blood they could of easily aimed this film for the 12A market in the same genre setting as film such as BEASTLY and CITY OF EMBER.

Mark Goddard.