Friday, October 28, 2011

Closed for the Season

(2010)**

Two 20-somethings get trapped by ghosts in an abandoned amusement park and have to survive all the legends as they come to life. The pair must visit every attraction one last time in order to escape.

This film was based on a very cool real life scenario. There was an abandoned amusement park in Ohio that was the site of a number of legends - civil war general hung his dead there, mafia used it to bury corpses, kid got thrown off a roller coaster, etc. So, the directors made a movie where all of these legends, real or not, come to life to torment a couple. The coolest thing of all - the movie was filmed at the site of the abandoned amusement park. I love the setting, and the setting is the only reason why this movie gets 2 stars. Anything abandoned is creepy. My uncle lives in Ohio by an abandoned golf course, and even that is super cool to explore!

The problem with this movie is all the legends take on a hallucinatory effect. So, we see the two protagonists get killed 4 or 5 times a piece, but then of course, it turns out they were fine. It's hard to keep up the suspense when you keep seeing the lead get killed over and over only to come back to life. Lots of evil clowns, but mostly evil in the aggressive bully kind of way - not scary evil. Also, at two hours, this movie is far too long. The directors wanted to fit in as many of the myths as they could - it wasn't worth it.





6 comments:

DKC said...

Man, it's such a bummer when it sounds like such a winning idea (and setting!) and it turns out to be lame.

JPX said...

Damnit, this sounds good! That's a shame that it stinks. Whirlygirl likes to take pictures in abandoned places and I totally understand the appeal. I wonder if JSP will be covering this one?

Trevor said...

I wondered that too - there are a lot of clowns here JSP - and there's still 3 days of October left!

Catfreeek said...

Are you catching JSP's clown fever?

Octopunk said...

An abandoned golf course? I can't tell how that rates vs. abandoned other places, but I agree that all things derelict are fun to explore.

And yeah, phooey on the "fake deaths/wake up" motif. Lame.

Johnny Sweatpants said...

Damn, I thought I did a pretty thorough job seeking out the evil clown movies but this one was completely off my radar!

Malevolent

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