User reviews

The scariest thing about this flick is seeing the moniker Steven M Smith appear cos you know what a pile of steaming waste of time this is gonna be.

63 minutes long with 10 minutes of end credit for a film that had 3 people working on it. Need to meet the runtime much?????

Avoid at all costs

.......so you could first of all, get through the 6 minutes of painfully slow opening credits of no names.....Also to fast forward through most of the movie....I'm tired of these no talent wonders that took a drama or theater class in high school (for one semester) and now think they are "film makers"?...The only thing i can think of is all these "directors" seen the Blair Witch , which took about 35 dollars to make, then made millions and millions, and think they are going to recreate that? NOT GONNA HAPPEN....I wish "straight to VHS" term was still around, because I would certainly be using it here... Dont watch this piece of dung movie , with actors that should NEVER be called "actors"..

Another awful cheap "horror" movie with a flimsy script, bad acting and super-weird props! Don't waste your time!

Not everyone that thinks they are an artist can create something that others can relate to or appreciate. The people responsible for this movie thought they were making art at some point, I am sure. It wasn't just the bad acting, horrible directing, atrocious camera work or ridiculous dialogue and pointless story that failed to impress. I can't come up with any redeeming quality or reason to have made this movie. The shots from the drone were steady, and looked kinda cool. That guy may work again

4 is the nicest I can offer. You added a lot a effort into this production, especially with a show string budget. However it just got boring and predictable with plain unlikable characters. Too many of them anyway.

Steven M Smith certainly likes to see his name in the credits, written, produced, directed... and then some. That's the trouble with a "one man show", nobody told him it was a BAD idea...

The movie has this in the description, "the event is run by a group of terrible amateur dramatic actors"... NO, that is the true description of the production crew and actors. The story (if you can call it that) is stupidly incoherent, there is nothing felt for the (so called) characters... Is it some revenge thing, a jealous mad girl thing; who knows...

If you want to waste your time with this POOR effort, go ahead. I for one thought it was the worst movie I have seen in a long time, and I have seen a few this year...

Granted, I hadn't even heard about this 2019 movie titled "Scare Attraction" from writer and director Steven M. Smith until I happened to stumble upon it in 2020. The movie's cover definitely looked interesting and with it being a horror movie, of course I had to sit down and watch it.

I made it maybe 20-25 minutes into the ordeal that is known as "Scare Attraction", then I simply had enough boredom for one day.

First of all, a great part of the movie was shot with very questionable and shoddy camera work, which felt like something shot by an amateur - sort of like a drunk uncle filming a wedding. It just was awful to watch. And it didn't help much that the characters were pointless and uninteresting, not to mention the storyline was simply put just boredom.

The dialogue delivered by the actors and actresses was actually as pointless and boring as the characters that were doing the dialogue. Not the fault of the actors or actresses, believe you me, because they simply had no material to work with in any way.

"Scare Attraction" utterly failed to entertain me, much less catch and keep my attention and interest. And I can honestly say that this is not a movie I will be returning to a second time to finish watching the rest of the movie. Why? Because I simply have absolutely no interest in the movie whatsoever.

I am rating "Scare Attracting" a generous two out of ten stars.

If this is a horror movie, then my name is chappie. This movie has terrible script, terrible acting, no good storyline. Wasted my time watching this awful flick. Don't watch this nonsense.

I can't figure out why this film got funding. Watched it for about half an hour and then turned it off. Didn't care what happened next, as always the characters are a-holes.

This is a very boring film by Steven M Smith. Hardly any character development or actual storytelling. He hires one location for a term and makes several movies at that same location to make quick money out of them. It's a strange phenomenon that he keeps making scary unimaginative films. I feel a little embarrassed for the actors who committed to learn lines for this film. I really liked Earl Ling, why is he in this?

Scare Attraction literally ticks every horror stereotype in the genre book. The poster is misleading and doesn't really contain an IT clown or a werewolf.. instead we get cheap Poundland masks probably bought the same day of day 1 of principal photography.

This film is as scary as they come and way up there with the other horrors by Mr. Smith. Take that how you will.

Clever idea, executed and delivered. It is met with the usual restrictions no budget film making has but actors like Tony Fadil bring it to life.

Up there with the best this director has to offer.

This is.....horrible. There is not a single redeeming thing here. Trash. Complete and utter trash.

I am guessing there was a subpar live interactive haunted house event and the film makers decided to kill two birds with one stone and film a half ass movie during the event. The film takes us through a tour of the rooms and acts within each rooms, with a tour guide showing people prepare for the event. Then we watch the rooms play out as a reality tv star and her crew go through each room. Then during the second half of the film the story that is advertised starts, with the crew being forced to play a truth or dare type of game for their lives. The film then goes back and forth from the actual story-line to showing people being scared... somewhat, in the other rooms.

As far the event goes, nothing about it would be entertaining live. They have a Fight Club room where you watch lousy boxing, a room with mob bosses, another one with people blindfolded and being scared by a person in a clown costume, another with a bad werewolf costume person eating meat, and an escape room... with no clues presented on how to escape. They all are uncomfortably awkward with poor performances, poor production, and poorly conceived. Then we also get some montages of people with Halloween make up dancing in front of the camera between scene transitions. This is shamefully cheap and unprofessional film making.

I have been to terrible live shows before and this just brought me back to how uncomfortable a live interactive show can be.

One small detail that bothered me over and over was the room where they blindfold people and have the clown scare them. The guide keeps saying, "Let me tell you a ghost story. There's a ghost in the room and his name is Charlie." And that was it. That's not a story. That is an explanation of the current state of affairs. No wonder this film doesn't know how to stay on topic. They don't even know what a "story" is.

This is an unpleasant watch and not for any fun reasons.

I try to be nice with low budget stuff. Not everyone has a big backing, and it can force you to think outside the box, be creative, and come up with unconventional ways to get your point across.

Or it can result in one of the most turgid results of just filming people who may or may not all actually be actors, editing into about 70 minutes despite it feeling at least double that, slapping a title on it and going "I guess that'll do" ever produced.

Scare Attraction is the latter.

Not worth your time investing. Try watching something like IT or Saw, much better movies to watch and they're original.

Filmed on a $150,000 budget, SCARE ATTRACTION has director/co-writer Steven M. Smith (THE HAUNTING OF BORLEY RECTORY, DOLL HOUSE) failing to establish any sense of fear, tension, nor suspense as it is just plains dullsville here with the cast doing all that can to make their performances work amid Smith's pedestrian helming job while the story is just sheerly awful with barely any gory killing(nor any nudity) in sight as it all leads to one of those stale grim finales, leaving SCARE ATTRACTION as a cinematic attraction that is truly worth skipping.

"what's that noise?" "What does that mean?" For 40 minutes Can even tell what is going on, but nothing screams a scare attraction like and escape room, clowns room....mafia room? And a boxing room????

Indie Genre filmmaking has become more accessible to the average person as technology and equipment have become increasingly affordable. The main hurdles left for prospective filmmakers is a great story and a half-decent budget. Although high budgets have been proven not to be the be-all-and-end-all of a successful horror film, as The Blair Witch Project (1999), The Evil Dead (1981) and One Cut of the Dead (2017) has shown, it is a completely different challenge when your budget is a scanty £12,000, as is the case with Scare Attraction. But even such a meagre budget could be offset by a singular creative vision and the benefit of a unique and gripping story. When you also consider the fact that the film was shot in 4 days and filmed back-to-back with another Steven M. Smith production, Dead Again, you truly see how enormous the challenge would have been.

The plot to Scare Attraction is relatively straight-forward; Reality TV stars Peter (Elliot Cable) and Susie (Primrose Bigwood) attend a Halloween scare attraction in an effort to raise their profile. The pair are joined by a small entourage of managers, handlers and bodyguards.

After touring the Mafia, Boxing and Clown rooms, the entire group is led into the "crème-dela- crème" of escape rooms, where they are locked in and eventually gassed and fall unconscious.

When they eventually awake, the group find themselves bound and trapped in a puzzling torture chamber.

The limitations of low-budget filmmaking are often brutally obvious to the discerning viewer, but Steven M. Smith manages to accomplish something quite exciting in the early stages of Scare Attraction, regardless of the tight production turn-around, incredibly low budget and staggering workload. The film starts off with a mundane opening sequence, but the actual opening credits create a foreboding and intriguing atmosphere of what the filmmaker has in store for the viewer. The creature design is on full display during these clips and the potential for horror and gore is promising, while we are also semi-introduced to our protagonists.

The found-footage, mockumentary style and obviously improvised dialogue could so easily have been a cliched hinderance, but instead Smith impresses with a wonderful extended no-cut scene, filled with quirky interactions, led by Jon-Paul Gates, who hams it up in all of his scenes as the tour guide. Gates is used sparingly, which is a shame, as his frequent pop-culture references and playful, charismatic performance is such a delight.

The sound design and score also stands out, as Darren Wonnacott (The Man Who Killed Hitler Then The Bigfoot) creates an energetic, menacing soundtrack which enhances the action without being too bombastic or distracting.

But, inevitably, it is in the execution of the story where it all seems to fall apart for Scare Attraction. Although Smith makes an attempt to explore the vapid and dismissive nature of celebrity culture and influence, all characters are shockingly underdeveloped and although it wouldn't be a fatal error to have so many unlikeable characters, of which Peter and Susie are the most petulant and whiny, everyone seems pedestrian, stale and without any depth. The mystery is confused and fractured, with scenes bleeding into each other without rhyme, reason or discernible structure or purpose. It feels suspiciously as if the overlapping productions of Dead Again and Scare Attraction contributed to a chaotic and disorientated mixture of footage. The central mystery is equally undercooked, while the traditional post- Sixth Sense-style twist is astoundingly unearned and uninspired.

Scare Attraction is, unfortunately, a misnomer, as there are little to no scares and no interesting story or characters to attract the viewer.

If you want to waste your time with this b side bit o garbage, go for it. Totally stupid. Lousy beginning, worse middle, and dumb end. Whoever made this should go back to bartending.

Preparing for a new presentation, a group of actors at a local scare attraction run through the routine as a special preview for several celebrities to get word-of-mouth going, but as the tour goes on they begin to question the ulterior motive of the trip when they're forced to play a madman's deadly game.

This was a rather enjoyable feature. One of the better aspects on display here is the films' setup and presentation that has a lot to like. Initially doing the backstage preparation video with the performer going around to the other groups of performers in their various assignments which runs the gamut from playful glimpses of their intended performance to realizing that everything hasn't gone according to the script and throwing a fit, which is really enjoyable. Alongside the setup of the influencers coming to watch, this is a fun starting point to everything else that happens. Once this goes into the actual presentation, the cheesiness on display becomes highly enjoyable the more it carries on. Realizing that they're legitimately trying and just coming up a bit short on the realism scale with the boxing match or Mafia encounter gone wrong, it looks genuinely like the actors are doing their best with limiting options here given the way the rooms are set up since several are unconventional attraction scenarios. While this is the case, several others are just that creepy and genuinely unnerving, and with their differing reactions, this one becomes a cheesy good time. As well, the final half carries on a rather fun format of going through several repeated sequences. Alternating between night-camera footage of contestants being scared in the darkened room, jumped at by the female ghost, the killer stalking victims backstage and the game being carried out all taking place at the same time, it's a highly enjoyable sequence of events that take a somewhat surprising turn with the revelations and reveals that come forth. While also detailing some nice aftermath gore effects, these manage to hold the film up over its flaws. There are a few issues here. The main problem is the film's inability to tell what's going on as the lighthearted rooms and performances go against the darker truths of the group being held hostage. It feels quite out-of-character compared to the other events and is genuinely confusing as to how it fits in with the point of the story. That also makes it hard to tell if the slasher is real or not since these are done so late in the film, done without warning, and are shot in slow-motion montages so it's nearly impossible to trust it. These aspects are what hold this one back.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language and Violence.

Very good low budget Movie with a great cast & crew, watched it with my girls (aged 7 & 10) they loved it. Keep up the good work Steven M Smith