HOOKED UP (2013)

Studio:       Uncork’d Entertainment
Director:    Pablo Larcuen
Writer:       Pablo Larcuen, Eduard Sola
Producer:  Emi Fort, Pablo Larcuen
Stars:     Stephen Ohl, Jonah Ehenreich, Natascha Wiese, Julia Molins

Review Score:

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Summary:

Two friends vacationing in Barcelona become trapped in a haunted house after hooking up with the wrong girl at a nightclub.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

After his girlfriend Lisa breaks up with him, Peter accompanies his roommate Tonio on a trip to Barcelona. At a club on their first night in Spain, the two men meet Katia and Noemi. Looking for a place where the four of them can stay together that evening, Katia suggests going to her grandparents’ empty house.

At the house, Tonio hooks up with Noemi. Peter insists that they leave after Katia bites his penis during oral sex, but he and Tonio become locked inside. The power goes out and the two girls disappear.

Peter and Tonio explore the house and find a makeshift shrine with a newspaper article picturing Katia under the headline “Disgrace in Barcelona.” Katia reappears wearing a white mask and wielding a knife. The roommates hide in a bedroom and bar the door before discovering Noemi mutilated with the word “whore” carved into her chest, but still conscious inside an armoire.

Peter arms himself with a broken chair leg and the newly formed trio returns to the hallway to hunt Katia. Peter chases Katia and seemingly locks her inside one of the rooms while Noemi accidentally catches her foot in a steel trap.

Peter and Tonio pull Noemi into the other room to translate the newspaper article above the candlelit shrine. They learn that Katia was apparently murdered by American tourists and presume that they are now confronting her vengeful ghost.

The trio continues looking for an exit while Katia pursues them. Peter grows increasingly infuriated, slapping Noemi and inadvertently pushing her so hard that she falls backward and impales herself on a small statue of the Virgin Mary.

Peter’s strangely agitated behavior continues. Gasoline drops onto he and Tonio from the ceiling, prompting them to remove their clothes. Peter has a sudden asthma attack. Tonio separates from his roommate to retrieve Peter’s dropped inhaler. Tonio finds an open exit door and briefly escapes before deciding to return to the house for Peter.

Katia attacks Tonio and beats him seemingly unconscious. Tonio plays possum so he can surprise Katia by stabbing her in the eye with a fork before fleeing.

Tonio retrieves Peter and tries escaping once more, but discovers the door locked again. Still behaving strangely, Peter accuses Tonio of colluding to kill him.

Peter and Tonio hear a phone ringing in another room. Upon investigating, they find lit candles littering the floor. Still covered in gasoline, Peter forces Tonio to fight the dangerous flames and retrieve the phone.

Peter asks Tonio why he pressured him into kissing another girl at a party, which led to his breakup with Lisa. Tonio confesses that it was a setup to split the couple apart. Peter punches him and runs away. When the roommates reunite a short time later, Tonio tells Peter that he conspired to create the breakup because Lisa cheated on Peter with their friend Sam.

Katia attacks. Peter manages to wrestle away Katia’s knife and stab her repeatedly. Covered in Katia’s blood and now wielding her blade, Peter accuses Tonio of orchestrating his breakup with Lisa out of jealousy. Tonio punches Peter and flees.

In the basement, Tonio is startled by a disfigured woman in chains who resembles Katia. The woman pleads for help, claiming Katia is not a ghost but her sister, and asking Tonio to free her so that she can show him the way out.

Tonio unlocks the woman’s restraints and follows her to a torture room where she tries to attack. However, Peter reappears and kills her from behind. Tonio presumes he is rescued, but Peter resumes his accusations before assaulting Tonio and pulling out his tongue. Peter then punches Tonio to death. Afterward, Peter records a strange message for Lisa before committing suicide by falling down a stairwell.

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Review:

The original poster for “Hooked Up” makes much ado about the movie being “the first feature film shot entirely with an iPhone,” as if that claim is an enticing enough reason to see it, much less an assurance of value on that basis alone.  I’m not advocating that quality motion pictures can only come from elaborate IMAX setups or complicated camera systems, but if you juxtapose images of legendary directors perched behind Panavisions against someone hoisting a cellphone in the film camera’s place, well, one of those things is not like the other.

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The second thing the movie’s marketing material wants audiences to know is that “Hooked Up” is “presented by” Jaume Collet-Serra, director of several big-budget Liam Neeson thrillers as well as genre offerings “Orphan” and the “House of Wax” remake.  “Presented by” is usually Hollywood-speak for “peripherally involved for name recognition only,” which appears to be the case here.  With Collet-Serra having a Barcelona background similar to the filmmakers, my money is on “favor for a friend” as the reason for his association.  If not that, then blackmail.

Having seen “Hooked Up,” I can surmise why the promotional blurbs glom onto the movie’s iPhone origins and Jaume Collet-Serra’s vague credit as primary points worth touting.  Because frankly, there isn’t a whole lot else to say about “Hooked Up” that could possibly attract anyone looking for even barely passable horror entertainment.

Partially to ease the pain of his roommate being dumped, obnoxious Tonio brings slightly less obnoxious Peter along for a five-day romp overseas.  The best bros then spend their first afternoon abroad bounding around a beautiful Barcelona breach admiring exotic Spanish beauties.  Presumably, anyway.  Despite being a juvenile horndog of the highest order, Tonio apparently prefers to talk about a “chick in a red bikini” that revved his engine instead of actually recording her.  In fact, Tonio doesn’t seem to record anything at all between the nondescript Newark airport and drab hotel room interior.  Tonio instead preserves his valuable phone memory to capture video of him jumping on the bed like a three-year-old, peeing into his pal’s bathtub, peeing into a beer glass to play a prank at a bar, and engaging in all manner of generally dickish behavior to make you question why your time is being spent watching activity so pointlessly lame.

“Hooked Up” is only 70-something minutes long, yet cannot find material to fill that space that isn’t annoying, boring, or both at the same time.  Look no further for proof than an opening scene featuring an uninterrupted three minutes of Peter puking into a toilet.

Eventually, the dynamic dullards pick up a pair of local hotties during a nightclub bender.  One of the ladies suggests hitting up her grandparents’ abandoned old house for a nightcap, since following strangers to unknown locations in foreign countries always leads to beneficial results for American tourists in horror movies.  Of course, the house is a haunted trap and the girl who led them there may or not be a ghost looking to avenge some injustice vaguely identified via newspaper clipping read in screamed dialogue that is barely decipherable.  Overdramatic panic ensues and the remaining hour or so is spent with Tonio and Peter repeatedly running into locked doors, barbed wire windows, or a knife-wielding weirdo wearing a white mask.

“Hooked Up” is so uninspired that criticisms of its components cannot help but read like clichés, too.  Characters not worth caring about.  Lousy jump scares fabricated with artificial audio pops whenever a cupboard door is opened or a shape appears around a corner.  Dreadful dialogue actually includes lines like, “I’m too young to die” without a remote hint of irony.

Events routinely take place that don’t lead to payoffs of any kind.  For instance, the two buddies discover a walkie-talkie and also become inexplicably doused in gasoline, yet no one arrives from the other end of the radio and no one ignites in a ball of flame, either.  Unsure if there is any honest intention at all behind anything happening in the movie, I’m awarding it one star out of five simply for the sake of mercy.

If you’re on the side of the “found footage” debate that despises the subgenre, “Hooked Up” will only reaffirm that hatred.  If you’re a proponent of the first-person format, “Hooked Up” is cause to consider crossing over that line and joining the pitchfork and torch-bearing camp with everybody else.

Review Score:  20

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