User reviews

The Plot.

A group of film students from Miskatonic University venture into an old Victorian house with a grisly past to shoot a last-minute thesis, but the discovery of a mysterious book called the Necronomicon brings production to a deadly halt when they awaken the spirits of three vengeful witches.

What a bunch of hooey.

How this clown got someone to give him money to direct this piece of garbage is beyond me. He's untalented.

The script is a total derivative rip off of every movie ever made in this genre.

The acting is below amateurish.

But the REAL problem is this horrible director. He really should be homeless living on the street. Please stop the madness and don't fund this clown. He has no talent.

What you get: nice old mansion, crap story, horrible acting, special effects dating back to the 80s The idea for this movie is not too bad. The synopsis sounded interesting enough to me. It raises expectations the movie can't deliver.

Who casted these guys as actors? This is sometimes so bad that it gets funny. I have seen a lot better in music videos or even TV commercials for breakfast cereals. Who wrote the dialogues? Repetitive and boring. They talk so much about things nobody would ever find interesting.

What actually happens for 40 min is close to nothing. How is that even possible? They could have elaborated on the old mansion, on the story or on the characters. Thos is a whole new dimension of boring.

There was one scene with really outstanding visual effects. You get books flying around. That was so bad. Even adjusting them on a rope and moving the rope with the books would have been more impressive. I haven't seen something like that in ages.

So much potential wasted here. Do yourself a favour, go to the dentist, clean the filter of your vacuum cleaner or check if your vaccinations are up to date. Can think of so many other things I wouldn't like to do rather than having to watch that film again.

I give 1 for story idea and 1 for everybody involved to finish a project like that.

I am a horror movie lover. This was just awful, for real. Most horror movies, for me, are either lame or not, there is no middle. This movie isn't good enough to be put on either end. I realise they say its not bad acting its a bad script but not with this one. I have no acting experience at all but I could have done a better job then the women in this one. You do have a college education to fall back on, right?

Writing this as i go. Drinking rules at the bottom.

Straight off the bat, i think this is a student film. I don't know if this was done during the school year or after graduation with some classmates and friends. The acting is decent by 1 person in here, student/theatre level by most and one guy feels almost offensive in their portrayal.

Definitely feels like college students trying to fight for PC rights and a lot of social awareness commentary. Not saying good or bad, but it was very noticeable and to the point of repetitive.

The movie tries to come across as if it is a documentary style. However, soon after the initial scene, it's evident that the scenes are not shot at all from the perspective of one of the students. They have one of the characters filming everything, however the viewer never sees anything from their perspective but instead from some unseen camera. And yet, they still do the shaky cam as if one of the actors was filming it.

Every. Single. Scene. And even some angles. Are changed by a solid second of black screen. Like a weird editing cut.

It takes about Almost halfway through the film before the actual meat of the plot develops, And even then it starts to immediately come across really forced and awkward.

The background music isn't awful.

Sound comes off ok, but there are still some scenes where it feels like they spoke too loud for the mic and went over Audio levels. I'm not a sound mixer, but I know there's a term for that.

It's very unimaginative. Using the Arkham name, the Necronomicon, even giving off a vibe of some cabin in the woods movie with a betrayer-mechanic. All of which is done very blandly. An excellent example is when they discover the Necronomicon, going like this:

{girl enters room} "Whoa. Is that a book? It says it's the Necronomicon." ...yup.

I saw a relationship go from zero to, "let's move to New York and start our own company together" In the span of 30 minutes. It felt "real natural".

The good thing I can say about the movie is, it's short.

I think a character died as I was typing some of this out, and I had no idea. It was that uneventful.

I've seen bad movies. I've seen worst movies than this. But I've never seen a bad movie like this. So I guess that makes it special. But, despite what the students here want everyone to think, being special is not always a good thing.

Even drinks don't help this one :s That said, Here is what I could come up with: 2 sips: * Solid black screen scene change *Badly delivered line

3 sips: * Introduction of new character * Loss of character *"Horror scene" *social commentary

5 sips: * forced drama/group argument

Shots: *Start of film *30 minute mark *any time you notice an actor/actress smiling during what should be a tense/scary scene

I think everyone would need to come up with their own rules to add on, because this movie goes by really fast and you can't get drunk fast enough.

The standout element of this film are the visual effects. For a low budget flick, the magic and witchcraft visuals were done well and they didn't distract or take you out of the movie. The acting was hit and mix at points, and so was the writing some times but this movie managed to entertain me more than Rings (2017). The witches in Reel Nightmare could have been in more scenes. They were the strongest draw to the film. The lead girl and overall, the female cast was superior to the male counterparts. But no living character here is a match for the witches. The witches had a strong presence and I'm glad they didn't use CGI to bring them to life.

The screenplay will not win any awards but it's definitely an entertaining movie with great production value (for a small budget film). The color work in some scenes is really nice and the effects were cheesy but also above average. This movie could do well as a SciFi network Sunday movie. The witches were scary but they managed to make them alluring. i wanted to be a witch myself. The story has a very feminist tone that some guys will not like but if you watch it with an open mind, you can understand why it's important to give everyone a fair shot and how not to judge a book by it's cover. Speaking of book, it was only introduced midway but the sequence with the books attacking the blonde chick was a nice effect.

I liked that this movie Reel Nightmare flipped the bird to all sexist, xenophobic and racists out there. That's what good indie filmmaking is supposed to be about: defying the status quo and the world needs that today. The quirky humor in this movie is not gonna click with everyone but thats a good thing these days. The witches effects were well done but the movie was getting good when it ended. Wish there was more in it to get to know the parallel between witches and the Hilarys of the world. Not a bad movie, but could have been better if more time that been invested to develop the witches backstory which is the most interesting aspect of the film.

Armand Petri's Reel Nightmare is a very well produced independent horror with the acting, camera, lighting and sound design one would expect of a main-stream Hollywood film. The film is a seamless high-bred of found footage with traditional narrative but with Reel Nightmare, the found footage is not ever part of the actual visual presentation but rather an ecstatic theme driven by the scene structure, in other words, no shaking camera or armature looking footage. Though all performances were compelling , I especially liked the portrayal of Sofia by Madeleine Heil who offers a first rate delivery. The film provides a few laughs, plenty of scares and a very cool surprise ending. I hope to see more from this production team!