Well, let me start with this: It was slightly better than I expected but much worse than I would have liked.

I'm speaking of Boo. A film I just finished and wish I hadn't. There were other things I could have done with my time that would have been more productive. For instance, I could have watched more behind the scenes regarding Cronenberg's The Fly, an immensely better crafted film.

Who's responsible for this thing? One Anthony C. Ferrante. He's worked for years writing for "Fangoria" and (before it folded) Gorezone. The guy knows his horror and should by all rights have made a horror movie for horror fans. What the fuck went wrong, then?

First, the good. He wrote and directed this and obviously wanted to take it in a certain direction. Apparently that is the House on Haunted Hill and Session 9 direction. Hey, no complaints from me. I love both of those flicks. But then remove all of the fun elements and you get Boo.

Some nice shots, a few creepy moments and some ok gore. Add to that, these things, and tell me what you'll come up with: Terrible dialogue, shit acting and a shoddy script. Yes, you've got crap. I'm glad you're good with math.

Plot: There's a plot? Sorta. Some kids go to an abandoned hospital for Halloween and there's some pissed ghosts. That's it. Aside from the blaxploitation actor who's now a cop and the son of his old partner.....Really, it's totally pointless.

For the first half of the film, I kept wanting to know what in the hell was going on. Why is there a pissed off ghost or ghosts? Why? Can I buy a fucking vowel? For the last half, I was begging the movie to STOP telling me why there was a pissed off ghost. It was freakin' awful.

Terrible dialogue. Abso-fucking-lutely terrible.

There was only one decent actor and they went and killed him. I guess that was supposed to be "daring" and "unexpected". But as soon as I saw that his injury was identical to the one that the only good character in Jason vs.........Sorry. Freddy vs. Jason suffered, I knew he was toast and I was no longer invested in his character.

Boo is a film based on a setting. A location. An already "creepy" location. Hence the Session 9 reference. But where Session 9 utilized its intrinsically disturbing background, Boo fails utterly to bring the reality into the fiction. Sure, things are filmed nicely and the sound-design started off well (the last 15 minutes of ghost dialogue was shit). But overall it was a cut rate rip-off of films that did it better.

If you've got nothing better to do, it's worth a Netflix rental. But don't buy the fucker. I have faith that Mr. Ferrante can do better. I just think he needs to leave the writing to someone else.