Lake Fear

Lake Fear

Starring Shanon Snedden, Taylor LeeAnn Graham, Jessica Willis, Jori Gill

Directed by Michael Crum

The Story:
Friends Jordan (Shanon Snedden), Kathy (Taylor Leeann Graham), Tina (Jessica Willis), and Stephanie (Jori Gill) decide to go to a cabin in the woods for a weekend trip, but learn soon after arriving that the cabin has some evil spirits inside that doesn't want the girls to leave.

The Synopsis:
The thing I can appreciate the most about horror is the ability to tell any type of story and make it truly terrifying.  Ghosts, aliens, evil clowns, spiders, heights, enclosed spaces - there's a plethora of topics you can pick to make a scary movie out of.  Also, you don't need a big budget to make a horror movie work, some of the most terrifying films were done on shoe-string budgets.  That's what's so frustrating about "Lake Fear" - it's nowhere near scary, and there's absolutely no story to it whatsoever.  Despite having a small budget, they failed to deliver any type of scary movie, but instead provided 88 minutes of cringe-inducing acting, editing, and especially effects and sound.

Basically, this film tried to be "Evil Dead" and "The Ring," but failing on both ends.  Four friends go to a cabin in the woods, and are hunted by a spirit just because - and they're forced to watch a collection of weird videos on a television screen that, for some reason, they can't look away from.  The actors are so bland and terrible it's no wonder you've never heard their names, and probably never will again.  The editing seemed to be done by a film studies student who dropped out freshman year, and the effects were laughable at best.  Yet all of this could be forgiven if there was a decent story, or one you can even understand, but the sound was so bad you couldn't even hear what the girls were saying most of the time, and it left me clueless as to what was happening - not because it was highly cerebral, but so poorly done on every end.

Also, in a probably unintentionally funny way, there was a man who appears near the end (where he came from, I have no idea), and he keeps getting kicked out of the cabin by the spirit, and it reminded me of when Jazz kept getting kicked out of the Banks house on "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air."

The Summary:
Typically I can at least find one positive thing to say about any film, but "Lake Fear" has no such redeeming qualities.  Poor acting, story, editing, and sound all make for a terrible viewing, unless you want to watch an unintentional comedy - and yet this film has spawned two sequels!

The Score: D-