Protraph Lack of good storyline.

Lucybespro It is a performances centric movie

BroadcastChic Excellent, a Must See

Janis One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Leofwine_draca The struggling British film industry commits another blunder with this highly predictable horror film, produced with part funding from the French who now probably regret their decision. I can't say that this film will do much for cultural relations as it is really a major disappointment from the beginning. I had been meaning to catch this at the cinema and never did, now I know why. The lame and clichéd antics never for one single second add up to anything other than overwhelming boredom and the overall result is that you are left feeling that you've seen it all before, and if you're anything of a horror fan like me then you will have. First off the film attempts to appeal to the teen audience with a group of foul-mouthed youngsters having sex, taking drugs and doing all of the other things that teenagers supposedly do. Sadly the cast is a largely uninteresting bunch with only one or two half decent actors in there. The rest just woodenly say their lines without any conviction and make no impact at all.Most of the faces are unfamiliar with only a couple of exceptions to hook in something of an audience. First we have Joe Absolom, a guy who had a role on popular British soap EASTENDERS a few years back; but I don't remember his acting being this bad back then! Absolom is given a fairly dramatic character to contend with but his efforts are hardly noteworthy. Now, remember how old British B-films back in the '60s and '70s used to have imported American stars to appeal to the American audience? They've done the same thing here with the appearance of former child star Lukas Haas (WITNESS), now a gangly twentysomething who enjoys playing with a video camera (for no other reason than to recall THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT). Although Haas gives only an adequate performance he still turns out to be the best actor in the film.The stupid plot concerns the oh-so-predictable antics surrounding a ouija board séance that gets out of hand. An unseen djinn is summoned and proceeds to wreak havoc by…killing off the teenagers one by one. A good opportunity for some imaginative deaths and gore, you might think? Sadly not. The deaths are skimmed over, major characters disappear only to later be found in elevator shafts, etc. The idea of an ancient djinn as a monster has already been done in the superior WISHMASTER and besides which the budget doesn't stretch to any special effects (other than some cheap snake eye morphing stuff), so instead one of the teens gets possessed and we're left trying to figure out which one.Although this film is shot well, the direction is poor (first-timer Marcus Adams really needs to try harder and stop messing around) and the editing is hopeless, just random scenes strung together in a sequence with no idea of time frame or anything. My favourite bit is a suspenseful moment where Lukas Haas is trapped in a dark house with the monster, but it's quickly and predictably over and the film once again goes downhill from there. The finale is yet another of those tired "twist ending" clichés we all know and hate. Only sadists need apply for this uninteresting talkathon.

manchester_england2004 Britain has a long history of horror movie productions, with the heyday for such movies being the period of the late 1950s to 1980. Hammer, Amicus and Tigon combined produced the vast majority of British horror movies during this period and helped to keep the industry alive in the 1970s when American investment dried up. Two excellent independent directors, Pete Walker and Norman J. Warren, succeeded them in the mid-1970s and continued their excellent work.Some viewers of movies from the British horror heyday get the false impression that they were all about vampires, monsters and witchcraft. Well, I admit there were plenty of examples of this type of movie but they were plenty of other types that fall well outside this category. Take for example, Hammer's DR. JEKYLL AND SISTER HYDE or the Amicus anthologies or Pete Walker's FRIGHTMARE. Or what about a movie that was not produced by any of the sources I mentioned - THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE.Since the 1980s, there have been very few British horror movies worth mentioning. The British movie industry has tried unsuccessfully for nearly 30 years to mimic the style and content of infinitely superior American movies rather than staying to its true roots.LONG TIME DEAD is one such unsuccessful example - funded in part with taxpayers' money through the UK Film Council. British people have the right to be angered their hard-earned cash has been put towards such a travesty as this without them having any say in the matter.The plot of this movie sounds really great on paper - a group of students having an all-night party start messing around with a Ouija board and unleash an evil Djinn. One-by-one they are murdered in gruesome ways, leaving the survivors to solve the mystery.Those who say this movie is a throwback to the heyday of British horror are simply wrong. The movie is very clearly inspired by superior recent American teenage movies such as I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER and URBAN LEGEND to name just two. There are even a few nods to modern minor classics such as SCREAM and one stylish nod to THE EVIL DEAD.Unfortunately the final result of this movie is something less akin to the decent movies mentioned and more in common with lame cheap straight-to-DVD movies such as THE CHOKE and ONE OF THEM. As in those two movies, characters disappear for long periods of time without explanation. And when any are killed, their friends soon forget about them.As one would expect with this type of movie, the acting is unilaterally awful, ranging from no acting to overacting. Joe Absolom was more interesting to watch as Matthew Rose in the British soap, EASTENDERS. He was a good choice of actor to have in this movie but his talent is completely wasted.The dialogue in LONG TIME DEAD is truly terrible. I was reminded of another British horror movie made around the same time called CRADLE OF FEAR. However, CRADLE OF FEAR was much funnier and enjoyable on the "so bad it's good" level thanks to some overacting on the part of lead actors, some weirdo characters who were interesting to watch and cheesy special effects.The score for this movie has nothing at all to do with the horror theme and sounds just like a random pop song of the kind Hollywood choose to tag on to the end of their movies. It is not worthy of a British horror movie. Listen to the scores of movies from Britain's horror heyday and make the comparison.Perhaps the worst crime of all in this movie is the sheer tedium. There are long periods of time when nothing is happening. Characters are wandering around checking out places but there is no suspense, no tension. There are only the clichéd jump scares that became worn 20 years ago.The movie does have a few good points. The killing scenes are well-executed, leaving the most gory effects to the imagination and there is at least some attempt at a decent build-up to them. It is only for this reason that I give the movie a rating of 2 rather than 1.Overall, I do not recommend this movie at all. American viewers would do better to stick to their own movies, they are far superior. Those wanting to see a proper British horror movie should do themselves a favour by seeking one out from the 1950s, 1960s or 1970s when we had proper talent in this field.

crawdad-6 This movie seems to owe a huge debt to Final Destination, in that the film is primarily about horrible fate hunting down a group of teens one-by-one.I found the characters even more cardboard-cutout than those in F.D. Main difference is that here the threat is personified, but the boogity stays so undeveloped that this is a weakness. The father should have been developed quite a bit more, and the landlord could have been a very interesting pivot point for the story, instead of serving merely as a red herring or distraction.The fact that the ending was actually an ending, rather than a Hollywood sequel-tease was nice, however.Watchable, but only just. If, however, you go all weak-kneed over mush-moufed British accents, you might like it more than I did.

Libretio LONG TIME DEAD Aspect ratio: 1.85:1Sound format: Dolby DigitalDuring a Ouija session, several drunken teenagers summon a djinn which proceeds to kill them, one by one.Though clearly influenced by American horror movies, LONG TIME DEAD finds an echo in Michael Armstrong's UK thriller THE HAUNTED HOUSE OF HORROR (1969), in which bored teenagers inadvertently sparked the wrath of a deadly killer - in Armstrong's film, the villain was an all-too-human maniac, whereas Marcus Adams' updated version unleashes the forces of supernatural terror on its hapless protagonists. Alec Newman (from the TV remake of DUNE) is the unofficial leader of the group, whose father (Michael Feast) was involved in similar jiggery-pokery many years earlier, leading to several deaths witnessed by Newman as a child. The movie opened in UK theaters to scathing reviews and dismal box-office, and while the artless, multi-authored screenplay wanders aimlessly from scene to scene (the curse of so many modern horror films), it isn't nearly as bad as various reviews have suggested. Performances are uniformly fine (particularly Newman as the damaged young man forced to come to terms with his father's terrible legacy, and former soap star Joe Absolom as a potential victim), and Adams stages the various set-pieces with brisk precision, building to a fiery showdown between Newman and the unstoppable monster. The narrative makes little sense, but the movie is efficient and watchable, and amounts to passable popcorn entertainment, nothing more or less.