‘Entity’ Review
Stars: Dervla Kirwan, Charlotte Riley, Branko Tomovic, Rupert Hill, Oliver Jackson, Michael David Worden | Written and Directed by Steve Stone
In 1998, thirty four unidentified bodies were found in shallow graves in a remote Siberian forest. Despite subsequent police investigations no official explanation was ever offered by the Russian authorities for these deaths. The case was closed three years later. In 2010 a small English TV crew set out for the remote Russian forest. The Darkest Secrets TV programme revisits the sites of unsolved mysteries both ancient and modern. They employ the gifts of a psychic whose extraordinary powers may shed new light on this old secret.. The last communication to their production office in London stated that they were approaching the Siberian region where the bodies were found. Nothing was heard from them again…
And so begins yet another “TV crew goes ghost-hunting” movie. It’s not like we haven’t seen this type of film before, in fact its become something of a mainstay of straight to DVD fare these days – with the likes of Episode 50, Grave Encounters and Gacy House cluttering up the shelves of supermarkets everywhere, does anyone feel that audiences are clamouring for yet another one?
However the real question is not why did writer/director Steve Stone feel the need to make a found footage flick, but more how did he get one of TV’s most beloved actresses, Dervla Kirwin, to appear in such a crappy movie? An even bigger question is how the hell did the film manage to win two awards (Best Sci-fi / Horror Feature and Best Low Budget Film) at the recent London Independent Film Festival? Was the rest of the programme so bad that the awards HAD to go to Entity?
Let me put it like this: imagine taking all the found-footage cliches you can think of, writing them down on strips of paper adding them to a bowl which contains pre-written jump scares and sound effects. Then think of a bunch of stereotypical horror-movie character traits, write them down and add them to the bowl. Then one by one pull the strips of paper out of the bowl and mash them up into some semblance of order. That’s how it looks like Entity was produced – in short, this is film making by numbers.
Worst of all? The film, despite it’s cynical attempt at scaring the audience through jump cuts, loud noises and shadowy figures, still feels incredibly dull. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before and undoubtedly nothing we won’t see in the future.
* 1/5
