Review by Stephanie Scaife
Here we have the sophomore effort from Canadian director Jon Knautz, who brought us the amusing festival pleaser Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer in 2007. This time he plays it entirely straight in this ambitious but ultimately disappointing horror film that arrives on DVD and Blu-ray this week.
Ambitious young journalist Carmen (Cindy Sampson) is desperate for her big break after being assigned nothing but fluff pieces by her editor at the magazine, so after hearing about the disappearance of a string of backpackers travelling through Eastern Europe Carmen thinks she may be on to the story that will make her career. The last tourist to go missing was Eric Taylor, and after a lacklustre police effort his exasperated mother is more than happy to have the help of an enthusiastic journalist, giving Carmen access to his personal belongings. After reading Eric’s journal Carmen tracks down his disappearance to the (fictional) Polish village of Alvania. Hot on the heels of the story (and conveniently without telling anyone where they are going) Carmen, her long suffering photographer boyfriend Marcus (Aaron Ashmore) and the wet behind the ears magazine intern Sara (Meghan Heffern) head off to Poland to investigate.
Usually in these kinds of low budget horror films the filmmakers are desperately trying to pawn off their cheap Eastern European location as someplace else, but here we have Canada as the stand in for Poland, which looks more than a little odd. So we find our hapless trio in Alvania (aka Ontario), predictably being shunned by the frosty locals, who appear to be dressed like medieval peasants for some inexplicable reason. There is also a dense and spooky fog in a nearby forest that clearly warrants further investigation; however they are quickly warned off by the locals and told to leave immediately. This does not deter Carmen who insists on going back to explore the fog further; of course things do not go well and Carmen and Sara both get lost and separately come across a bizarre statue that bleeds and whose gaze follows their movements. This is one of the more effective scenes and the statue is actually pretty creepy, creating an air of menace that is unfortunately rarely repeated elsewhere in the film.
After seeing the statue both Sara and Carmen are plagued with visions of the townsfolk as demons and by whispering voices. Still not taking the hint that all is not well Carmen coerces Lidia, a little girl from the village, into taking the trio to a sacrificial tomb where they find the corpses of the missing tourists, including Eric, who all seem to have bizarre masks embedded onto their faces. Once within the tomb they find themselves surrounded and Sara and Carmen appear to be the next in line for a mask fitting…
It’s at this point that the otherwise slow build begins to pays off with some decent gore and make-up effects, and the plot itself takes a sort of unexpected turn which, whilst it stops The Shrine being entirely predictable, doesn’t make up for the fact that it has up until that point been fairly dull. There is also the entirely unnecessary political message, which is about as subtle as a brick to the head, regarding America’s foreign policy, and a smattering of misogyny is thrown in for good measure, leaving a rather unsavoury taste in my mouth.
The Shrine does try to do something with its limited budget but it never really quite succeeds, instead coming across as an overlong pilot for a network TV show, with that standard of acting to match. It never really finds its footing or holds your attention despite a few creepy moments. You could probably do worse in the over-saturated market of straight-to-DVD horror, but that’s hardly high praise.
The Shrine is available now on DVD and Blu-ray from Arrow Films, and includes no special features.