Crazy Eights

Plot synopsis:
Jennifer Jones (Dina Meyer) is giving a lecture to a college psychology class on the subject of human emotion. After the class ends and the students leave, the projector remains on and begins performing oddly, flashing images that disturb and confuse Jennifer. Meanwhile, other strange phenomena presents itself to Father Lyle Dey (George Newbern), who experiences nightmares of a ghostly unknown presence. At the same time, Beth Patterson (Gabrielle Anwar) is haunted by nightmares of a girl she does not recognize. She has become obsessed with this unknown girl, sculpting her face into clay and repeatedly asking the sculpture to tell her who she is. While sculpting, Beth ignores a call from her therapist, who leaves a message expressing concern over Beth's nightmares and the added stress of the recent suicide of a childhood friend. As the message is playing, Beth becomes more and more stressed, eventually ripping the jaw off of the clay face.
Soon thereafter, Jennifer, Lyle, and Beth gather at the funeral of their mutual childhood friend, along with three other old friends: Brent Sykes (Frank Whaley), Gina Conte (Traci Lords), and Wayne Morrison (Dan DeLuca). After the funeral, the six leave the graveyard and go to their friend's home. Following instructions in their friend's will, they look for and find a box containing a letter and a map. The map marks the location of a time capsule that the group buried together many years ago. The letter apologizes for the friend's suicide but asks that the remaining friends face the past and the things forgotten together. The letter ends by reminding them that they will always be together. The only other item in the box is an old photograph of eight children standing in front of a baseball field. Brent comments that their group must not have been very bright since a baseball team requires at least nine players, not eight, but Lyle chides him by saying that Crazy Eights was simply a name.
The six travel to their childhood hometown and use the map to find an old, dilapidated barn, where the time capsule has been placed in the upper level. The group opens the box to find various items that they owned in their youth, including Beth's paint brushes, a journal (which once belonged to the deceased friend), a slingshot, and a few other items. They decide to move the box outside by using a pulley to carry it out of a nearby window. While Jennifer, Lyle and Brent are attempting to lift the box out, Beth and Wayne talk outside. Beth notices a new scar on Wayne's forehead; when she asks him about it, he confesses that he does not know how he got it, and that the cut appeared right after a disturbing nightmare he had. Suddenly, the box drops behind them and smashes, having slipped from the pulley.
When the group goes to the box again, they find that the bottom has split open, revealing a secret compartment which contains the skeleton of a tiny girl. The group is unsure of what to do, debating whether to simply leave or to involve the authorities. Brent angrily leaves the group, refusing to accept any responsibility or consequences for the unknown skeleton.
Upon realizing that Brent still has the keys to the van, the others quickly catch up to him, although they are still undecided as to what to do about the box and its grisly contents. As the group attempts to drive away, they find themselves lost and continually returning to a large white house no matter which direction they travel in. Brent notices a figure standing near a few trees surrounding the house, and quickly leads the group to her location. The girl disappears once the group heads towards her, so they decide to enter the home to search for her. The group agrees to split up into two groups, in the hopes of finding the girl faster.
Wayne and Gina walk around outside and find the entrance to the basement. Upon entering, Wayne just makes out the shadow of a person, but falls down the stairs and breaks his leg. Gina turns the basement's lights on as Wayne begs her not to leave him alone in the dark, and sets out for help. Meanwhile, the group inside sees that the house does not look as though anyone has lived there for a long time; Brent soon discovers a "Condemned" notice, stating that all trespassers will be shot without warning. Gina finds the others and notifies the rest of the group of Wayne's injury, and the group descends into the basement to aid Wayne, with Brent bringing anything from the van that might help them.
Once all members of the group are in the basement, the door strangely shuts and locks. The group, now looking for any way out of the house, leave with Wayne in tow and travel down a tunnel which they hope will lead them to another exit. The tunnel opens out into an abandoned underground hospital, complete with an empty nurse's station and rooms with hospital beds. The group decides to split up again to search for an exit or anything that might help them. The group leaves Wayne in Beth's care, but she soon abandons Wayne to explore the halls and rooms. She stares into a mirror hanging off a wall at the nurse's station, and is startled to see her younger self staring back at her.
Meanwhile, the abandoned Wayne hears a noise behind him and crawls over to a nearby window to investigate, the window inexplicably opened even though the outside is covered by bars. Behind him, a ghostly figure passes by and the window is suddenly closed, killing Wayne. The group soon returns to find Wayne's body, and upon managing to get him out, temporarily transfer it to the attic. Lyle and Gina take an obviously disturbed Beth to a room serving as a bedroom for multiple children in order to calm her down.
Beth demands to be left alone, and Lyle and Gina reluctantly comply. When left alone, Beth begins sucking her thumb, and lies on a bed. Soon, a horrible creature visits, promising to remove her guilt if she " reaches down, and pulls it out." Beth screams in response, and when the other five reenter the room, they find Beth's bloody body lying crumpled against a wall with her jaw torn off. This is eerily similar to the fate of Beth's sculpture she had crafted at the beginning of the story.
Brent panics and flees the room, running away from the remaining members of the group. He enters a series of adjoined, lighted rooms, before discovering that again, the series of rooms loop in circles, with no exit. Brent yells and curses at whoever is tormenting him, and promises that when he escapes the building, he will burn it to the ground.
Brent eventually returns to the other four. Gina, Lyle and Brent return to the room where they saw her reflection and break the mirror, discovering that it was a two-way mirror used to watch the previous occupants of the home. Brent somehow finds an exit, which leads to a room filled with a plethora of toys, and a large painting on the wall. Brent explains that "compassion is the difference between a man and a beast." The remainder of the group walks along the length of the hall exposed by the broken mirror, eventually arriving at a room containing records. The records document the progress of "subjects," among which were a savant and an autistic individual.
Lyle comes to the conclusion that they were trying to teach these unfortunate subjects guilt. However, Jennifer rampages through the room and exposes a large butterfly graffiti made by the group when they were children. They discover a picture frame containing pictures of all of them as children, including the man who each child believed was his or her own father.
Brent, meanwhile, drops to his knees and reads several quotes from a book in the time capsule, talking about how they cannot run. He comes to some sort of realization but a figure emerges from a pile of toys behind him and kills him before he can express it. Lyle suddenly recollects old, repressed memories hidden by pain and horror, about how the group of eight children escaped this home, where they had been experimented on.
He recounts how they were forced to leave one of the members of the group, a fragile young girl named Karen, in a chest containing meaningful objects, promising to return and rescue her. He realizes that the time capsule is the chest, and that they had come back for the girl long ago, only to find her dead from suffocation. Gina, horrified by this realization, runs into a bathroom, vomiting in the toilet. The bathroom is filled with multiple bathtubs, and she leans against one, moaning. Suddenly, the horrible creature who took the lives of Wayne, Beth, and Brent emerges behind her and blinds her by gouging her eyes out. She begins to scream as Lyle and Jennifer race towards the bathroom, but the door is locked.
Lyle and Jennifer manage to batter their way into the room, and quickly bind Gina's bleeding eyes with strips of cloth. They take her to the storage room, and leave her there, promising to return soon. Lyle convinces Jennifer that they must find and destroy all objects linking them to the dead girl, and implores her to split up to find the objects in a reduced amount of time. Gina reminds Lyle that Brent left a slingshot under a grate, near a truncated tunnel. Lyle finds the area, and reaches down to acquire the slingshot, when a hand grabs his. He quickly struggles and stumbles back, severely wounding his neck on a pike.
Meanwhile, Jennifer finds a paintbrush under a filthy bed, and begins to walk back to the room where Gina is. The blinded Gina, unaware of her surroundings and left with a metal bar to defend herself, inadvertently kills Lyle when he enters the room. In Lyle's last breaths, he tells Gina that yet another object is in the tunnel. Gina runs back to the entrance of the basement, where a horrible creature behind her clasps its hand over Gina's mouth, suffocating her. Jennifer returns to the room, finding Lyle dead. She pleads for the resurrection of the dead man, before gathering the courage to burn the slingshot and the paintbrush in a garbage can.
While burning the objects, the horrible creature (who is revealed to be Karen, the dead girl's spirit) who led the other group members to their deaths, taunts Jennifer, reminding her of how she left her in the chest. Jennifer asks, with a raising temper in her voice, what objects are left to burn.
When she does not receive an answer, she deduces that she herself is the only thing left connected to Karen. While Jennifer prepares to plunge a shard of glass into her stomach to kill herself, a flashback is shown where a man talks to Karen about the "project" is shown, and the movie abruptly ends with the words, "Do you know the meaning of guilt? Do you know the meaning of redemption? Choose."

Tags: violence, flashback

Review:
Six people come together after the death of a childhood friend and begin to unravel the secret behind a past they can't remember while trapped in some abandoned hospital kind of place, and thus begins the very many problems with Crazy Eights.The film is basically one very big collection of plot holes, beyond what I tried to sum up never really made sense, because for someone like me who has a long attention span, I can clearly say that barely anything is explained, for example, what was the purpose of the experiments?
I don't know if the director tried to make one of those films that's suppose to stay with you for a long time after you've watched it, wondering about the same things I just pointed out, well he did, only after I watched it, I didn't really like it.Another problem is the score, while watching the film I noticed that the score practically played throughout the film, I can probably account for less than three seconds for when I didn't hear it, and it was more annoying than anything else, for the majority of the film it just played, it didn't help set the tone or create a certain mood or help the film build any kind tension, it just played and muffled a lot of the dialog.The acting was so so, but whatever kind of film the filmmakers tried to make obviously doesn't work, want my advice?
I had higher hopes for Crazy Eights than previous films I had seen from the Afterdark Horrorfests' 8 Films to Die For lines, because after seeing a few, I thought I had acquired the ability to pick out the ones that would be good by then.
It's like the director and writer were drunk on the job, but had potential.I barely remember the climax/ending because I was put off by that moment, and just ready for the film to be over.
When Brax Young dies, his childhood friends Jennifer Jones (Dina Meyer), Gina Conte (Traci Lords), Father Lyle Dey (George Newbern), Wayne Morrison (Dan DeLuca), Brent Sykes (Frank Whaley) and Beth Patterson (Gabrielle Anwar) reunite after twenty years.
my love and admiration for crappy horror films stated, understand that this movie has no place in the horrorfest 8.
It is very cliché, which most B- Movies are, but this one so much so that it seems very amateur, and who likes watching something they feel like they could have written or produced?Please believe that this isn't your average bully picking on someone lesser than him.
I'm of no real merit in the movie review world, but I do watch a lot of crap-horror mainly because I feel like there's nothing better than a movie that accepts itself for what it is, and has fun with it's status, and that's a lot of what horrorfest has come to be.
This movie, however, seems to treat itself like it's the freshest and most original idea ever, when in reality, all they did was combine a series of elements that many movies have used in the past (i.e. house on haunted hill, the ring, saw, the grudge, and yes, as mentioned by others, and somewhat out of place in the previously listed, the big chill) ...SIDE NOTE: if you enjoy, in any way, the previously mentioned movies, and figure that because you liked some of those, that you'll like this, you wont, i'd request that you send me your $9.50 instead, and stop supporting a skid mark of movieThere's very little promise in this movie, I do recall one point where I got an inkling of excitement in thinking that soon and very soon, something worthwhile and exciting was going to happen, but alas, no such scenario.
My opinion of "8 Films to Die For" is steadily lowering after seeing a few really bad movies in their line up.
The deceased has outlined something he wants his friends to do, and that's follow a map that leads them to a spooky building, that they get trapped inside with a little girl ghost that takes them out one by one.
With a cast that has had a somewhat undeserved amount of attention placed on it, "Crazy Eights" is a story of 6 friends, reunited by another friend's funeral, who in following out said friend's last wishes, find themselves trapped in an abandoned medical facility, that as it turns out, holds the key to an event they all shared, but had blocked out of their memories.
Apparently someone forgot to write one of the characters as a skeptic who doesn't believe a spirit could be killing, but don't worry, people will have other things to be skeptical about as the plot progresses.Jump scares cause most problems here because while normally a poor replacement for atmosphere, for "Crazy Eights" lacking atmosphere leaves viewers watching people sitting in a room while daylight pours through the windows talking about how there's no escape.
The building refusing its captives an escape route is a commonly used idea, no atmosphere means the building comes across as nothing more than some building.If it was some big budget Hollywood film this would get four stars on account of its what I expect from them.
"Crazy Eights" is neither something completely new (if you saw some Japanese movies recently), nor a masterpiece, but it captivated me for the whole running time and I can't say anything bad about it.Fortunately I decided to rent the DVD by chance, i.e. without reading any reviews first.
The plot spins off into things-happen-for-no-reason territory shortly after we hit the point where the character's predicament becomes painfully obvious to everyone but them.From there on, all the usual horror film tropes are visited upon us, from the relatively modern cell-phones-that-never-work to the ancient let's-split-up-so-The-Evil-can-kill-us-easier.
As they rummage through lost memories, they discover a ghost that just won't stay quiet...now, they're trapped in their old orphanage and one by one they're succumbing to their past.The cast is fairly decent, however, the show is stolen by character actor Frank Whaley as the narcissistic one.
Just because all of one inarticulate reviewer has sandy privates over other people giving this film good reviews, don't let that deter you.The only thing that's 'off' about this particular flick is the editing -- otherwise, the pacing is VERY steady, the film only seems to drag in places where you can tell they wish they had more time, and there aren't all that many 'boo' scares to speak of.
interesting premise, but so much more is given here.the directing was perfect -- lighting, music, pacing, lack of showy special effects, it all served to build an excellent new take on the "haunted house" or "amnesia" style of plots.
The package he leaves for them to open leads them back to the past they had all forgotten and someone or something out for revenge.The cast contains a number of familiar faces (Traci Lords, Gabrielle Anwar, Frank Whaley) who give strong performances all around.
The screenplay is well written and the characters are believable and don't act like the idiots in most other horror films.
Crazy Eights is an awful waste of time.Six adults end up investigating their past for no good reason.
The movie is well filmed, with a decent cast making the most of a script that should never ever have been approved for production.
At times this movie wants to be a ghost story with a creepy girl, at other times it wants to be one of those lame psychothrillers where the characters are screaming at each other for hours.
At first it looked fine like an atmospheric horror movie with some ghost scares and rather psychological plot.
but as soon as the crazy ass ghost story kicked in the movie got irritating, in many cases ridiculous and random with people just dying here and there.
A really annoying movie with characters that especially in the second half totally overact but luckily die off like flies in a way that makes you care less with every murder.
Well...it's a pretty sure sign that you've seen a bad film when you spent nearly an hour and a half watching it and you can barely think of anything at all to say about it!
Also is the name 'Chuck Hammer' nestling comfortably in the list 'Top Ten Names to avoid giving to your child at all costs or he'll seek his revenge by composing ill fitting musical accompaniments'?Does 'B-Movie" now mean 'Bad' movie?If however you absolutely need to fill 80 minutes, may I recommend the following course of action - get some paint, a brush, one wall and a chair.After enduring the painful experience of watching 'Waz', 'The Happening' and now this film, i fear these may be the last coherent sentences I am able to extract from my tortured mind.*****SAVE YOURSELVES*****READ..
This friend leaves a map to a time capsule left by all of them at their childhood, bringing all of them to an abandoned, condemned hospital with dark secrets from their past.Hard to describe a film like this, but I ended up really enjoying it.
i am not sure if the sort of old fashioned grainy texture to the movie in places was due to low budget or planned but either way it added an eerie creepy effect to the movie.However I have to say , when it comes to the deaths *not giving actual details* it does seem like they were running low on money after the first two...
But i did think, maybe thats what they were going for.I didn't really notice all these major plot holes people are talking about, i think for this movie, any things in it that were mistakes actually added to the phsycological, eerie and unnerving style of the film.Overall i really enjoyed it!
The story tries to play out like Stephen King's It with the group of once-best friends brought together from their separation of time & distance and their attempt to answer mysteries of their past.
I was enjoying the movie, I thought a good ending would make this one something worth recommending, and then it just dies leaving me with the feeling that I had just wasted the last 90 minutes of my life.
Inside the box is a map which leads them to a house where they find a trunkand more revelations as the group ends up at the ruins of a hospital where things begin to go wrong and they begin to perish.
Its not giving anything away to say that the adults met when they were children taking part in psychological experiments (The opening text implies as much) and that the hospital is found out to be the place where they were "tested".I liked this film a great deal.
Just as I'm not sure about the intrusions of the memories through the earlier parts of the film, but its in a good way since it requires me to think about what I'm seeing.
I think if the director had been less sure of himself the film would have collapsed on itself, something the film is never in danger of doing.The acting by the reasonably well known cast (Frank Whaley, Tracy Lords, Gabrielle Anwar) is good, if somewhat histrionic.
One of the friends hurts his leg & the other's take him inside the house which suddenly turns into a hospital where the vengeful spirit of the dead girl stalks the corridors seeking revenge on those who killed her & left her body in the chest...One of the entries in that annual 8 Films to Die For After Dark Horrorfest festival thing Crazy Eights was co-edited, co-executive produced, co-produced, co-written & directed by James K.
There's no explanation as to why the six friends can remember each other but not the fact that they were orphans or the fact that they spent time in the hospital, we never really find out anything about the dead girl except that she was killed somehow & she blames the Crazy Eights, despite being trapped inside the hospital there are plenty of glass windows that the character's surely could have broke & climbed out of & there's no reason as to why the house suddenly turns into a hospital or why it's abandoned or where all the pictures & clues scattered throughout came from.
The set-up during the second half of the film feels very much like Saw II (2005) as a group of character's are trapped in a single location unaware of what's going on or why they are there & they begin to get killed off one by one, unfortunately Crazy Eights has nothing that made Saw II so good like the twist's & turns, the gore, the clever traps, the surprise ending & quick pacing.
Crazy Eights just doesn't feel like one coherent film, it's very bitty with a poor plot that is badly written & explained.
The special effects are alright but there's hardly any anyway.Probably shot on a pretty low budget somewhere in Maryland this actually has good production values & looks like a proper film.
The experienced cast is pretty good here, to reinforce the Saw connections Dina Meyer who was in Saw (2003), Saw II, Saw III (2006) & Saw IV (2007) stars here while ex teenage porn star Traci Lords continues to try & make a career as a proper actress.Crazy Eights is a mess of a film that feels like a cross between Saw II & a Asain ghost film but without any of the merits of either of them.
No gore, no twist's, a mess of a plot & a slow pace makes Crazy Eights yet another one of the 8 Films to Die For that is quite frankly pants..
Though it looks like a large house on top, there is really 100 miles of underground spooky tunnels with no escape underneath...where of course they get trapped after "exploring"...though why they would do that after it was found to be abandoned is anybody's guess, since they were trying to find directions/phone.Now trapped in the basement, they splinter off into groups where they are picked off one by one by the girl's (trunk skeleton) ghost.
The movie is about eight people who know each other who are led to an eerie house were they find a time capsule containing all of their childhood toys.
A great example of fear with a sense of helplessness would be when the group finds the time capsule in the attic of an old barn and inside is all there precious childhood memories, not knowing how they got there.
The movie starts out like "Without A Paddle" as six friends meet at the funeral of a classmate and are drawn into a scavenger hunt they takes them into a remake of "House On Haunted Hill." After a variety of strange encounters in their lives, the six are drawn to a barn where they left a time capsule as kids and find a skeleton in the trunk, which may or may not be linked to their pasts.
Somewhere in this detritus of scenes and images, the movie establishes the six friends once lived in the old hospital with their deceased friend and one other girl ("The Crazy Eight") where they were victims of psychological experiments, but they escaped after hiding the young girl and promising to return.
(Remind you of "I Know What You Did Last Summer?") This suggests their dead friend is the one getting revenge for forgetting about her in the trunk all those years ago, but at no point does anyone realize, "Hey, this the old hospital where we were abandoned by our parents to be terrorized by those evil doctors?" How could they possibly block something like that out, and why does the girl's ghost look adult and zombified?
It's a promising premise that gets convoluted and confusing without being scary or even making sense, and in my world, that's just a crying waste of what could have been a decent haunted house movie..
It's an angry little girl we hardly ever glimpse, which is a good thing in a film like this, but it's still a lame excuse for 90 minutes of supposed "terror." It's as nonsensical as its big-budget cousin, SILENT HILL, which used the same premise.Don't get me wrong, this isn't a horrible movie.
Childhood friends come together for a dead pal's funeral, abiding by his wishes to open a specific box together which contains a map inside leading to a chest containing the skeletal remains of a little girl, and items each person had at that point in their lives(slingshot, paint brushes, musical notes, etc).
I think the film wishes to explore the trauma of what happens to grown adults effected by a childhood they've buried away, like the corpse of Karen.
"Crazy Eights" is a potentially good movie undermined by a lot of flaws.**SPOILERS**Following a friend's death, friends Jennifer Jones, (Dina Mayer) Father Lyle Dey, (George Newbern) Gina Conte, (Traci Lords) Beth Patterson, (Gabrielle Anwar) Brent Sykes, (Franky Whaley) and Wayne Morrison, (Dan DeLuca) who have known each other since childhood, gather together to go through the belongings left to them.
Wrapped inside this frustrating story is a horror film with some solid scares and imagery, a good dose of atmosphere from the old building and a solid cast.
I was actually expecting that this movie was going to be a little bit better than the other "After Dark Horrorfest" series because there were some familiar stars (Dina Meyer, frank Whaley, and Traci Lords).
The movie made me think how it was possible for all the characters did not know anything about their past and foolishly ended back in this experimental and research building that they once lived in.
~Spoiler~ Crazy Eights is one of those movies that, while you're watching it you just can't believe how utterly awful it is.