Review of Boo

Introduction

Teenagers - they never bloody learn. If they`re not playing their rubbish music far too loud, turning the bathroom into an dirty cesspool and blaming the dog or sneaking out of the house with a packet of dad`s ciggies for an illicit underage smoke, they`re breaking into haunted houses for a midnight thrill and a spot of heavy petting.

The thing is, these spook shacks are generally populated by malevolent ghosties hell-bent on popping young souls and slurping them down with a side portion of entrails. This sort of shenanigans invariably gets them into hot water. Take the latest batch of wide-eyed younglings in `Boo` - It`s Halloween and a couple of lads plan on taking their girls to the old haunted hospital on the edge of town. Surely that`s got disaster written all over it, especially as the place has a history steeped in madness and evil? Well, it turns out it really isn`t the place for a cop and feel, as there`s a spirit intent on causing all sorts of nasty harm. The fools.

And this lot are college students - they`re far too old to blame the dog.

Video

Anamorphic 1.85:1

`Boo` gets a clear transfer to DVD, although there`s a little softness and some focus issues. There`s some minor film noise in the background, but it`s pretty much your bog standard 2005 print transfer.

Audio

Dolby Digital 5.1 or 2.0

The 5.1 track was used for the purposes of the review, and it turned out to be full sounding track - although there`s little in the way of effects or score to make much use of it, so it doesn`t make much of an impact.

Features

There`s a commentary with the director, a couple of producers and the editor which covers stuff from their... hmmm... clever use of homages to the genre classics to blessing us with anecdotes like, "Yeah, we filmed this bit in my brother-in-law`s house".

Also on the disc is a short feature titled, `Tales of the Linda Vista Hospital`, in which cast and crew discuss supposed real-life eerie occurrences on-set.

Then there be a fifteen-minute making of, ten-minute special effects feature, several deleted and extended scenes and a trailer.

Conclusion

Never heard of `Boo`? Join the club. There`s a reason why these wishy-washy teen-horrors bypass theaters and head straight to the rickety old bottom shelf of your local Blockbuster - they`re ripe for cashing in on the Saturday night rent-a-flick sleepover, where teenage girls who don`t know any better - who have no yearning to enjoy a well made film - lap them up as an excuse to huddle under duvets and have a bit of a giggle over which twenty-something-playing-a-teen is fittest. But `Boo`, an amateurish abomination of a film, is likely to have even the casual horror crowd turning their noses up.

You know you`re in for a ride on the choppy waters of a bad horror bonanza when the first scene in the masterpiece you`re watching looks like it`s stolen from `Stab`, the film-within-a-film, tongue-within-a-cheek franchise from Wes Craven`s `Scream` series... except played completely straight. Within ten minutes, the shot of a solitary wheelchair in a darkened hallway is a revelation as to where this one`s going - `Boo` is `Session 9`, one of the absolute best chillers of the past ten years, drained of scares and dumbed down for the MySpace and iPod generation. `Boo` can`t decide whether it`s a supernatural tale, a creature feature or a stalk-n-slash - so naturally it throws elements of the lot into a melting pot, and the result is a stodgy stew of bad ideas garnished with some of the worst scripting, dialogue and acting from an indie horror feature. The acting is actually so ridiculous from the bland, faceless (sadly not literally), identikit teen fodder, you half expect `Boo` is a typo, and the flick is going to turn out to be a horror-themed, soft-focus sexcapade - surely the next scene is going to be a full on simulated sex romp? Sadly not - this is the proverbial `Emmanuelle in the Haunted Hospital`, minus the good bits.

Like the worst of its peers in the overmilked neo-horror market, only so much worse, `Boo` is an affront to everything the multi-national horror genre has achieved in the past fourty some-odd years. Microwavable popcorn gubbins for the braindead brain - marketed at those who`ll never appreciate the likes of `The Shining`, `Texas Chain Saw Massacre` or `Halloween`. Their loss, our gain. If there`s one thing four decades of classic horror has made the aficionados good at, besides shaking their heads in disgust at remaking genre classics, it`s picking apart a bad horror flick. In this respect, `Boo` will be like shooting sardines in a can: the idea of creating atmosphere here is flicking a light switch on and off, the effects were old hat before Jason took Manhattan, and the scares are just preposterous. Your average teen-horror is usually good for a few jumps in its running time, but `Boo` can`t even meet the terribly low standard set by `House of Wax`, `Cherry Falls` and `Wrong Turn`. A feature actually so stilted and lifeless, some viewers are bound to sit and wonder just what videogame it`s based on.

"From the producer of `Dog Soldiers!" the cover quote proclaims. Which one - the fella who "produced" the cast`s tea and bacon sarnies in the morning? It`s actually David E. Allen, but this has as much in common with Neil Marshall`s slick lupine gorefest as Michelangelo`s renaissance paintings have with peeing onto fresh snow. Ghostly horror? Ghastly and horrible, more like - and if this lot miraculously manage to raise the finance for `Boo Too`, they can feel free to quote that marvelously inventive little play on words on the box.