Review by Tristan Bishop
We’ve all seen those ghost hunting TV programmes – the ones with a presenter, camera crew and an overacting ‘medium’ like the disgraced Derek Acorah (I shall be careful here as, whilst I write this, a report is on the news about a psychic winning damages from a paper for calling her a fake) running around the dark being scared by distant noises and attempting to contact the dead? Yeah, those ones. You’ve probably seen a couple of low budget horror films that do exactly the same thing, too, most likely with a found footage spin. It’s entirely possible that you’ve been bored to tears by them too – I know I have. So when I popped the disc for Entity in, my initial thoughts – well – weren’t great.
The film starts with a TV crew and a psychic called Ruth (Dervla Kirwin – yup, the barmaid from Ballykissangel!) who are filming in a remote Siberian forest. Along to help them out is their guide Yuri (Branko Tomovic), a man with ‘hidden agenda’ stamped all across his forehead. Ruth starts seeing and communicating with the spirits of the dead, as some kind of mass killing has occurred there. Soon enough she senses that something is leading her to what Yuri describes as an abandoned factory through a forest. The team heads on to investigate, and, sure enough, the factory is there, although not what it appears to be. In fact, it appears that the facility was once used to hold, experiment on and torture fellow psychics. Ruth soon learns that there was one inmate who possessed immense power, and goes to try and contact him, which turns out to not be the best idea, as this spirit is malevolent, and may be able to manifest physically…
First things first, Entity is not quite a found footage film – there are several scenes shown as shot by the cameras of the on-screen film crew, but these are balanced against traditional camerawork, and there is no wraparound gubbins about this being footage discovered etc etc. At first I was unsure, as I, like an increasing number of horror fans, am getting sick to the back teeth of found footage films and the paucity of plotting and scripting and using the ‘immediacy’ of the shaky video footage as a shortcut to scares (as well as usefully side stepping the need to have in-focus scares, and therefore keeping budgets dirt cheap). However, first-time director Steve Stone actually makes it work in the context of the film – the set-ups are mostly traditional shots, with the ‘found’ footage interjecting to add a level of reality to some of the scares, and to amp up tension where required. Additionally, the sound design on this film is pretty impressive – from high pitched whining to unnerve the audience during the tension building scenes, to some truly scary demonic moans and cacophonous voices nearer the end of the film. I viewed the film whilst wearing headphones in the dark, although I imagine this will work even better should you ever get the chance to see it on a big screen. The editing also impresses, and it’s obvious Steve Stone has worked very hard to scare us in the audio/visual department.
Unfortunately there are a couple of areas were Entity really falls down. Firstly, Stone not only directed, but scripted, and, sad to say, this doesn’t appear to be where his talents lie – the dialogue is flat and perfunctory, giving us no sense of character and therefore no-one to care about or to root for, and therefore by the (rather predictable) ending we don’t feel as exhilarated as we should. This is not helped by some of the actors who, aside from the professional turns by Kirwin and Charlotte Riley (who plays the presenter of the show), give some terrible performances.
Despite the failings, however, Entity works most of the time. The sole purpose of the film is to scare us, and it pulls out every trick it can to do so. I’ll even admit to having the hairs on my arms stand up a few times as the characters rushed about in that oppressive location with the soundtrack manipulating me. So if you want a spooky timewaster, go for it; I just hope Stone’s next project will have the budget for a good script and solid cast.
Entity is released to Region 2 DVD on 24th June, from Metrodome. For an alternate (and rather more enthusiastic) take, see Nia’s review.