_**Wannabe Tarantino flick about a house of fools**_
In 1988, three ‘metalhead’ teen girls (Alexandra Daddario, Maddie Hasson & Amy Forsyth) travel the sticks of Indiana to a concert featuring the band Soldiers of Satan. They meet three guys (Keean Johnson, Logan Miller & Austin Swift) and take them to a mansion owned by Alexis’ dad to party wherein the fun eventually turns… horrific.
“We Summon the Darkness” (2019) is entertaining for the first act as it takes us back to 1988 and a metal concert, which features MF’s “Black Funeral,” but then it bogs down at a mansion for the rest of the movie where it becomes clear that the director & writer were shooting for a Tarantino-like picture.
The problem is, they ain’t Tarantino. They lack his writing talents, especially his great dialogues, plus they don’t have the quality actors to pull off the story. Don’t get me wrong, the six main actors do well for an Indie, but they’re not anywhere close to the level of John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Bridget Fonda, Mélanie Laurent, Christoph Waltz, Brad Pitt, Bruce Willis, etc.
One problem is that the two main girls, Alexis (Daddario) & Val (Hasson), aren’t believable, and I’m talking about after the key revelation is unveiled. They shoot for 100 lb. psycho biyatches, but come across campy and not overly daunting, particularly the alluring Val. Sometimes the movie’s even humorous, making me wonder if it’s an intentional black comedy. In the mansion there’s a lot of screaming and bloodletting that gets eye-rolling and tedious, à la the last acts of "Psycho II" (1983), “Scream” (1996) and “The Hateful Eight” (2015).
The message is that appearances can be deceiving and the sheeple can be misguided or fooled, which is a good one, but I didn’t buy the twist’s revelations and I’m not even talking about the initial surprise so much, but rather the whole shebang. Then again, it could be argued that money is the root of all kinds of evil and well-meaning people HAVE been corrupted by the allure of filthy lucre and their followers misguided. Yet it seems too forced here, like the creators had a Lefty agenda and it’s off-putting. Give me “Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood” (2019) any day.
The film runs 1 hour, 30 minutes, and was shot in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
GRADE: C/C-
