UNTITLED HORROR MOVIE (2021)

Studio:      (Yet) Another Distribution Company
Director:    Nick Simon
Writer:      Luke Baines, Nick Simon
Producer:  Bronwyn Cornelius, Marina Stabile, Luke Baines, Nick Simon
Stars:     Luke Baines, Darren Barnet, Timothy Granaderos, Claire Holt, Katherine McNamara, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Kal Penn, Aisha Tyler

Review Score:

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Summary:

Six actor friends accidentally summon supernatural evil while trying to make their own horror movie over Zoom during COVID-19 quarantine.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

With their TV show “Belle” possibly facing cancellation, and to pass the time during COVID-19 quarantine, Kip convinces his co-stars Chrissy, Kelly, Max, Alex, and Declan to help him remotely make a horror film about a supernatural spirit that possesses people over Zoom. To inject authenticity into Kip’s script, Declan finds a banishment curse on Reddit that Chrissy reads aloud while holding a crystal she wears around her neck like a pendulum pendant. Everyone separately starts experiencing paranormal activity while shooting their scenes alone, including being forced to inflict pain on themselves.

The other five friends watch as Chrissy becomes possessed into strangling herself with her own hand. Chrissy tears off her crystal before falling to the floor. Unsure if Chrissy’s death might have been staged, Declan rushes to her home to find out what happened. Kip and Kelly continue watching as Declan arrives entranced at Chrissy’s window. Declan possesses Chrissy into repeating her self-strangulation. Confused, Kip and Kelly call Declan only to discover he is still driving in his car.

The real Declan arrives at Chrissy’s. Thinking the pendulum pendant connects to their apparent curse, Kelly has Declan retrieve the crystal from Chrissy’s corpse. After Declan goes back outside, Chrissy’s body disappears. Chrissy reappears in an entranced state, which causes Declan to flee back home.

The friends continue to be supernaturally attacked in their homes. Further research reveals that stopping the curse requires allowing the spell to run its course. The friends agree to pass on the curse to someone else. Declan volunteers to find someone to send the necklace and spell to.

Network executive Bobbie Brower arranges a Zoom meeting for the five remaining actors. Instead of cancellation, Bobbie announces that “Belle” has been renewed for three more seasons thanks to Chrissy’s death renewing their show’s popularity.

The friends find out who Declan sent the package to when Bobbie opens it during the call. Bobbie reads the spell Declan wrote on a note card while holding Chrissy’s pendant. The five friends suddenly become possessed. Declan repeatedly smashes his head against his computer screen.

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Review:

Welp, that didn’t take long. It’s Summer 2021. The light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel has only just started to shine. We’ve had “Host” (review here) and “Songbird” (review here) and “The Lockdown Hauntings” (review here), but there are undoubtedly more Zoom-themed thrillers still waiting in the wings after coming together over the preceding year. And yet here we already are with the probable nadir of this new subgenre of fright films made with webcams during quarantine: “Untitled Horror Movie.”

With the two titles developed in parallel without knowledge of each other’s existence, director/co-writer Nick Simon and co-writer/co-star Luke Baines probably flipped their computer tables with raging envy when they saw Rob Savage’s 2020 Shudder hit “Host.” Not because “Host” and “Untitled Horror Movie” have virtually identical plots, but because “Host” actually contains captivating content. “Untitled Horror Movie” essentially asks the question, what if “Host” was a horror-comedy, except not funny and not scary either?

Six somewhat-struggling actors have a twofold problem. The first issue is everyone being stuck at home due to the pandemic. The second situation is the sitcom they star in may be on the chopping block. In need of reel material and with ample time on their hands, Kip convinces his cantankerous ‘work friends’ to help him cough up a “found footage” flick about a supernatural spirit who possesses people via video calls.

For a while, all they can come up with are a lot of “what was that?” reactions while pretending to be plagued with paranormal activity in their respective homes. Sensing they need to inject authenticity into their pedestrian play, one of the guys finds a supposed spell online and one of the girls reads it while holding her crystal pendant. Voila. Spirit summoned. Humdrum horror hijinks ensue. Yada yada yada.

Simon and Baines should have taken a cue from their characters and done something to give their meta-movie a shot of adrenaline too. “Untitled Horror Movie” has nothing by way of a creature, ghost, or special effects of any kind until everyone pops in some cataract contact lenses at the end. When the actors become possessed, they’re driven to choke themselves with their own hands in what has to be the most un-frightening staging imaginable. Unless you want to marvel at actors pantomiming gasps, slaps, and flailing around their living rooms, “Untitled Horror Movie” runs the risk of lowering your heart rate with so much quizzical boredom, your FitBit might assume you died.

As for the humor quotient, here are a couple of example gags. When one of the needy actors pauses to exert a meditative breath, someone muses, “It sounds like you’re coming.” A reference to Kevin Smith guesting on Joe Rogan’s podcast earns the quip, “Was a mullet required to listen to that episode?” Technically, those are jokes, but come on.

“Untitled Horror Movie” only gets more niche from there. The flip flick mostly means to satirize a certain sect of Hollywood wannabes, namely those who are never going to be A-list stars yet aren’t newbie nobodies either. In-jokes at their expense arrive in increasingly shrinking circles where the number of viewers who are “in” on the joke gets smaller and smaller each time. “Nothing bad ever happens in Pasadena” might earn a sympathy snicker from Angelinos while everyone else in the world wonders, “huh?” Then there’s a crack about a specific acting instructor that teases, “You know how someone studies with Lesly Kahn? They’ll tell you,” which only makes sense if you’re among the 0.1% of people who know who Lesly Kahn is. L.A. upstarts might like such swipes, but I can’t imagine anyone else catching on to these tame takedowns of mid-tier Tinseltown.

“Untitled Horror Movie” clearly wasn’t my cup of tea. It went down like a glass of gasoline. But I do have some good things to say about it.

At least the movie is easy on the eyes. Photogenic actors who are more than capable of doing an undemanding gig like this one appear in front of colorfully decorated backgrounds. Cinematography is razor-sharp, arguably too much so since everyone is perfectly framed with quality lighting and a high picture resolution. Editing follows suit with a whip-crack pace that aims to emulate energy when the action can’t.

What else does “Untitled Horror Movie” have going for it though? A five-minute Aisha Tyler cameo? A two-minute Kal Penn cameo that I fully forgot about until I typed his name? You’ve got to give up more than that in this day and age and “Untitled Horror Movie” doesn’t have the goods to give. It’s a horror-comedy whose horror is basic “found footage” flopping, whose comedy can’t buy a laugh, and whose characters are only remotely relatable if you’re also an entitled egomaniac whose main traits are sipping white wine every afternoon or buying a Porsche with money you don’t have. Frost the clichéd cake by having the entire thing take place in two dimensions over computer screens, liberally sprinkle ham-fisted music on top, and you’ve baked up a start-to-finish snoozer with nearly no clever creativity to speak of.

Review Score: 30

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