Sir Dahm Reviews: Prison of the Psychotic Damned
 

Hello my name is Sir Dahm, and this is my first review.

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Now as a film student currently between colleges because College of Santa Fe just closed down, I've learned a few basic things about movies. First and for-most is the story of a movie. A story consists of a protagonist, an antagonist and a conflict, the conflict can be either internal, making the protagonist also the antagonist in most cases, or external, meaning the antagonist is another person of thing. That being said, the main problem I have with Prison of the Psychotic Damned is there is not a conflict, or even an antagonist.

The Characters 1/5 (Very annoying.)
The plot centers on a girl named Kansas, but to me she doesn't look like a Kansas, she looks like a Self-Pity Hippie, so that's her new name, SPH. Since we're supposed to associate with her, SPH does things every person does, like... umm, cut herself and get abducted by doctors only to be taken to the exact same place she was. Besides SPH we have her two "soon-to-be-dead" friends Pippy Longstockings and Cher. You'll see why that's in quotes in a little bit. Along with then is a fat guy, because they needed one man in the movie, and SPH's annoying and schizophrenic sister. Pippy is an Anime-loving ditz, who can never decide what her character is supposed to be feeling, and Cher is just kinda there for most of the movie. The fat guy, I call him Gary, is a "Man" because he makes sex jokes and hits on the girls he's surrounded by, and last and least her sister doesn't know what she is, even in the end, I wasn't sure if she was a student, a professional, a crazy lady, an idiot, or some hybrid of those.

The Plot 1/5 (It's better if you mute it and sync it with a Cher album)
Alright, the plot is your basic "Teens go into an abandoned prison, haunted by something... and get killed" which is all well and good, but I checked the clock, and it was 65 minutes into the movie before someone actually died, leaving only a brief 25 (20 really, they used credits to pad for time) to kill all of them except the protagonist off. I wish I could say more, but that's the entire plot, is our rag-tag team walking around a building, aimlessly may I add, and finally getting killed off. How is that a plot? That's a starting point, not a plot. People would think that up in a room, and then go write to get from point A to point B, not just have the entire plot be that, especially if you wait until the last 20 minutes to even introduce something to be scared of, which brings me to the main reason I dislike this movie, it's not scary. Their main way of trying to scare you is by flashing images in montages while Pee Wee Herman watches it and then gets arrested, and using that audio tape with an echo on it to try and be freaky. I'm saying this because I have to count that as a plot because at some point I would like to think someone said "I think this will help bring the story across better" hopefully in a British accent and the guy had a six-pack.

The Presentation 2/5 (Because of the CGI baby)
For most of the movie we see two views, through the eyes of the story, and through the eyes of a videotape, taking an idea obviously from Blair Witch, and yes I know movies did the video-camera angle before Blair Witch, but when the main character looks into the camera, and we switch to camera view and she says "I'm so scared" it's a rip-off, not a tribute. Also, a lot of the scenes are extremely unbalanced, to a point of making me feel like I was on a boat. Before I hear from a horror fan saying something like "Horror movies are supposed to be unbalanced, so the killer can pop out and scare us" I must remind you, there is no killer in this... The closest thing we get is a fetus-man who pops out in two shots. The scenes that were supposed to instill fear are the biggest disappointment, after Pippy Longstockings gets killed off, there's a scene with her taking a fake shower and Greg walks in thinking he gets lucky, and as soon as he realizes she's dead, she turns around, but instead of being scary, she comes off as adorable, which is strange. The editing is extremely sloppy, when there is editing, some scenes should've been cut way shorter, in fact, the first 30 minutes were pointless and could've been axed. I wouldn't mind a 45-60 minute decent movie, instead of a hard-to-finish 90 minute bad one. I'm adding in here location as part of the presentation, and if you didn't have them constantly saying they were in a "Prison" and the title, you wouldn't know it. Why you ask, because they were obviously in a train station and no one had the bright idea to try and mask that or change the name to "Train Station of the Psychotic Damned" of course that isn't scary. In numerous shots, you see "Baggage Claim", "Tickets" and in one shot, you even see a bumper sticker, promoting trains, and it's not a slip, it's too blatant to be a slip, no I think they put them in there because they honestly thought this movie would be so scary, that they needed an excuse to say "Look, it says 'Tickets' so this obviously wasn't a true story." There is one good thing, the CGI baby. For about 15 seconds, we are subjected to maybe the creepiest CGI baby in the history of the world, one that is connected to other babies for no reason, and chases the people we're supposed to cheer for. Why do I add this? Because I was actually hoping the demonic baby was the antagonist, and I actually found it more easy to relate with than Self-Pity Hippie. Also, in one scene, Hippie's sister mentions that there's 24 hour security. Wouldn't they have heard the screams, or showed up? Couldn't they have gone to them when the first person ran off in her idiocy? They just opened up a gaping plot hole with that, because they have no reason to be that scared of a psychotic killer, even an undead one if some guy is roaming around with a gun.

What I liked:
The CGI Baby... umm... That's about it.

What I hated:
The acting was horrible, the characters were unlikable, the LACK of a single antagonist, and the fact that we spend most of the movie waiting around for something to happen, but nothing did, really, nothing. You don't even see the first death scene, it's just a cut-away, which after seeing the other death scenes, I know why. The entire story was completely pointless, and left me wanting to watch a good movie, or at least one that was better put through. I will say that I love horror movies, and I don't have a problem with them, but they put little effort in everything in and about this movie.

Conclusion:
This movie was a major disappointment, I mean it was supposed to be horrifying, but all of it up to the last 20 minutes was just getting us to try to like one of the characters, and that failed horribly. Also, wouldn’t the 24 hour security that was mentioned hear the screams and go investigate? Who was the antagonist? Who was the protagonist? This movie has so many questions unanswered. This movie isn’t worth your money because it isn’t horror, in fact, it almost fails at being an actual movie if it didn’t have credits, and even those are padding because they go by soooo slow. Also, if it’s supposed to be in a mental hospita/prison, where were the cells? the rooms? Why not try to cover up the words like “Tickets” and “Baggage Claim” It wasn’t frightening because we didn’t know the antagonist. That’s a basic movie is you have your protagonist, your antagonist and your conflict, you had the protagonist but you didn’t have a clear antagonist, so you couldn’t have a conflict, except inner conflict... Inner conflict isn’t scary. Ugh, I need a cigarette...

Final Verdict: 1/5 CGI Babies.