Predictable

Rating: 1/10 (18 June 2009)

Firstly I HAVE to give this film a 1/10 to get the ratings down. I just got back from the cinema after watching this crap and I expected the IMDb rating to be 5 or lower. Imagine my surprise when it has 8/10!
This film is all too predictable. Think of Stephen King's Thinner meets The Haunting In Connecticut.
I walk into the cinema and there is NO ONE else there. The film starts with some Mexican boy being possessed and I thought the film was going to be one of those spoof horror-comedies when I saw over-the-top creepy shadow hands crawling over the ceiling. He gets dragged off to hell because he was cursed by a gypsy whose necklace he stole. Some Mexican woman looks on and promises to get revenge on the spirit that did it. When that scene finished we're taken to the life of Christine Brown, a loan officer for Wilshire Pacific Bank. She's after a promotion to position of Assistant Manager but so is her rival - the Asian Company Agent from Prison Break season 2.
She's day dreaming when some old gypsy woman starts asking her if the bank could give her more time on a mortgage repayment she missed. Christine, wanting to impress the boss, says no and so the gypsy then begs her, lunges at her and is then dragged out kicking and screaming. To be honest I thought that was simply horrible and I thought immediately that she deserved what happens but then we cut to a spooky underground car park (a setting used far too much for suspense and cheap scares) where the gypsy is waiting in Christine's car. Now here is the only time in the film where I WAS surprised. I thought the gypsy would curse her like in Thinner but instead starts attacking her with great strength and agility and it was quite funny to watch. One bit that was funny was when the gypsy's false teeth smash and she tries biting Christine with gums. Anyway, the whole fight seemed pointless as all she did was take a button from Christine's coat, curse it and give it back and THEN the predictability starts.
Christine and her boyfriend drive home where she starts getting creeped out with noises and seeing scary things with sharp teeth. Before she goes home she sees an Indian fortune teller who just happens to know EVERYTHING about the curse and was luckily just next to her boyfriend's parked car. He says she's cursed and makes no attempt to help her. After a half hour of miscellaneous scares and going to see the gypsy to retract the curse again just like in Thinner (I KNEW the old bag would be dead), she sees Indian man again. He says make a sacrifice so she kills her pet cat instead of finding a stray and I KNEW it wouldn't work. Meanwhile at work, she has a nose bleed so intense that she sprays blood everywhere and no one phones a doctor or anything. They just do nothing while she runs away. So back she goes to Indian man who says he knows this woman and you know what's coming: a standard Hollywood scary exorcism scene done by the Mexican woman from the first scene in the film (what a coincidence).
Here we're told that to remove the demon, Indian man, Christine, Mexican woman and another Mexican man have to hold hands, summon the demon and transfer it to a goat. Kill the goat and it's over. The goat starts to talk when it's possessed but of course the plan doesn't go ahead properly and the Mexican man gets bitten and is possessed. Mexican woman chants and the spirit is gone but Mexican woman dies for no reason. Indian man puts the cursed button in an envelope and says to give it to someone else and THEY will be dragged off to hell instead. She lies to her boyfriend saying it's all over and drops the envelope in the car and picks it up again. She ponders giving it to the Asian man from Prison Break but can't so back to Indian man again who says to give it to the gypsy's corpse. So over she goes to the cemetery, digs up the corpse and puts it in her mouth.
Next scene, she's all happy and I KNEW it wasn't a happy end. When she dropped the envelope in the car she mixed it with another envelope with a coin in it so she never got rid of it. She's dragged to hell while boyfriend watches and cries and it's over. Predictable standard horror.
If gypsies can curse people so easily, they should be ruling the world. Why didn't she use those powers to make payments or whatever? It makes no sense. Why this has such a high rating I don't know. It relies on shock scares too much with the plot being too ridiculous. The Indian man was ridiculous. Why didn't he just say give the button back to the gypsy or take her to the exorcist in the first place?