The Spell of 13
In many ways “The Spell of 13” is a lot like “Saving Private Ryan” (This is the only time I will compare “The Spell of 13” to that movie by the way). I make this comparison because, like Saving Private Ryan, the first ten minutes of the movie are better than the rest of the movie.
The plot starts out like a typical slasher: random movie theater employees are closing up for the night and there’s a killer dispatching them in various and creative ways. There’s blood, gore, suspense and random nudity and I actually enjoyed it even though I knew nothing about the characters being massacred.
I don’t know what the effects budget was but it was mostly used for this ten minute sequence. Then they ran out of money because the movie moves forward to the present day where we meet our three main characters who, incidentally enough, also wrote and directed this movie. There’s a certain irony there because as I was forced to watch these three irritating guys I really wanted them to die horrible deaths. The problem I had with these characters is that they all meet so randomly that there’s no reason to care for any of them. They come upon the movie theater from before, now abandoned, and begin to explore it. Then they find out they are trapped and there are hideous ghouls running around.
I kind of wished they went with the idea of ghouls attacking the movie employees, just a low-budget supernatural slasher. Instead we get three overweight guys with questionable acting (and directing, they must have used the same upwards camera angle at least five times) wandering around an abandoned movie theater for an hour before anything exciting happens. I will give them props for an interesting kill late in the game where one of the ghoul’s head explodes due to a can of Fix-a-Flat. Also, just in case you wanted to see this, there’s a mystery as to who killed the movie theater employees (I’ll give you a hint, it’s one of the three douchebags). So if you do pick up this movie turn it off after ten minutes and make a movie in your head. It’ll be better than this one.
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