Review for The Invoking

Sam inherits a property and invites three friends to come and check it. Getting there, they encounter the caretaker Eric, who is an old childhood friend of Sam's. Upon arriving they find that the house belonged to her aunt and Sam's real parents have a connection to the house. What then occurs is a mixture of supernatural chills and creepy slasher antics that brings Sam's past back to her.

My head hurts at just how bad this film is. When I saw that it had some good reviews in things like Fangoria, I assumed it would at least have a few good scares. It doesn't. In fact the film isn't scary at all. It is unnerving and has a creepy atmosphere, but it seems to rely on so many cliche moments that I could have almost played Bingo with the number of Horror tropes they used.

The acting by everyone involved was painful to watch. There is nothing positive to say about anyone and that almost makes this film dead in the water from the first second. When we are introduced to Sam, Mark, Caitlin and Roman I hated every one of them and had no care for their fates. Even the attempts to make me connect to the woefully inept Trin Miller as Sam was...well, woefully inept. I'm not sure whether to blame this on the terrible writing, the way they were directed or simply bad acting. D'Angelo Midili as the creepy Eric could have been a great character, but he was used in such a stupid way that there was no development in his creepiness.

As for the whole plot? Was there one? The main crux of the film seems to be that Sam's real father was a very bad man and then stuff happened. I say that, because it's never actually explained what happened and why anything was happening now. I'd hate to say that revealing anything else will ruin plotpoints from the film, but the film is so threadbare that anything I do reveal would rob the film of any slither of a story that it has.

The Direction is typical independent style, competent, but nothing exciting. Though it's not the worst camerawork or production I have seen, I have certainly seen better. The only positive thing I can say about the film is that the soundtrack provided by Trip Like Animals, who I have never heard of, was pretty great and maybe in another film would have been even better.

Well I can't say that they skimped on the Extra Features with two Commentaries, one featuring Writer/Director Jeremy Berg, Producer Matt Medisch, and Writer/Producer John Portanova and the other featuring actors Trin Miller, D’Angelo Midili, and Andi Norris. This is too much Commentary for a film this bad. I can understand if this was a great film or one that would be deemed to be in the future, but I really didn't want to hear what any of these people had to say. I listened to about half of each Commentary and though they all sounded like they had fun working together and on the film, it simply wasn't entertaining or interesting enough to keep me watching.

They also include a Behind the Scenes Documentary which is almost as long as the film. If you are a budding filmmaker you may find some interest here as they do go into the logistics of being low budget, having limited resources and using basically what they had to make the film. That being said, this was like watching an hour of 'delusions of grandure' as they all talk like they are making the next Exorcist or Halloween, instead of the awful tripe that it is.

The Invoking is not a good film. This is not because it has terrible writing, average production, is boring, poorly acted, not scary, but... no actually, that's exactly why it is not a good film. As a low budget, independent production it is not as bad as some I have seen, but that's certainly not something to brag about. Instead The Invoking is a terrible film that really should have stayed buried with the main characters' past.