[Our thanks to Michael Panduro for the following review.]
Based on one the most detailed accounts of the art of exorcism and the structure of Christian hell, The Entrance takes of to a flying start but ultimately glides into oblivion, taking it’s place alongside dozens of equally ambitious but misfired attempts at the religious thriller. Think about films like Lost Souls or the way-too-obvious Seven rip-off, Resurrection, remove most of their respective funding and you’ll get the idea.
This is a film that really really wants to, though! Wants to be creepy, wants to be serious, wants to be thought provoking, but generally is just dull and uninspired. The story centres on police detective Jen Porhowski (Redmond) and her encounter with drug dealer Ryan James (Uwe Boll regular Eklund). In dramatically flat flashbacks his story is unravelled. A story of devilish games forced upon strangers playing for their souls. This all sounds very intriguing and it is, but soon the film takes of in familiar directions, ripping plot points from similar, better movies, coming to long, dramatic standstills and leaving actor’s grasping for their last shred of believable character.
The serious tone is a problem, seeing as scripter-director-and-everything-elser Damon Vignale seems continuously inclined to using ridiculous and funny elements that totally undermine the already not to impressive mood. Giving the devil a colourful bow-tie and having people chair dance and play bingo for their life are funny ideas that totally remove The Entrance from any Saw comparisons, but doing it in scenes that are supposedly serious takes way more skill than Vignale demonstrates here. He doesn’t seem in control of the actor’s either, Eklund flailing away in different directions every other scene and Ron Suavé being about as creepy as the über-fake scar on his hand. Editing and a dramatic sense of tempo are other of Vignale’s short-comings, which seriously undermine his sophomore effort. The editing is choppy, short clips being too short for you too catch their objective and long shots being too long, rendering them plain boring.
These long, talkative shots, the use of very few locations, total lack of gore and the weak actor-direction gives the film a feel more like amateur theatre than big screen movie. Even the props and locations are theatre like, the devil showing people their sins on an old reel-projector and every location being empty and overexposed. Add to this the many rip-offs, especially in plot and sound-design (titles like Fallen, Lars Von Trier’s Kingdom and even American Beauty come to mind), and you might gather that the end result isn’t all to impressive. Even though it doesn’t even clock in at 82 minutes, The Entrance manages to be plain old boring on several occasions.
This reeks of low-budget TV-movie and would definitely have been more suited as an episode in whatever new horror series is coming up, but there are qualities, most notably the high level of ambition. Some details are well thought-out, some scenes work surprisingly well and the quietly surreal turn that comes halfway though is a welcome shot of unpredictability. Generally though, the film suffers from poor acting, weak direction and a script that drags. Supposedly there are two films following this one, but unless Vignale steps up on all fronts and pulls more interesting material from the super-intriguing source of inspiration, these will not be worth the wait.
Review by Michael Panduro
got a trailer?