The Shrine
Shrine on, you crazy diamond
Don't go to a
foreign country. Don't leave your state. Don't even leave your couch.
The world of horror has taught us that going anywhere is a recipe for
a disaster. Help is not coming and no one will ever find you. That's
being a little dramatic, but it does occasionally happen in real
life, which makes these movies more plausible. Granted, you're not
going to be horribly murdered visiting the Hockey Hall Of Fame in
Toronto, although that would be an awesome horror movie. Most of
these travel horror movies take place in remote locations and require
the main characters to be incredibly dumb. It's a a tried and true
horror recipe.
The Shrine is a
2010 horror movie starring Cindy Sampson (Swamp Devil, Supernatural)
as journalist Carmen and Aaron Ashmore (Smallville, Warehouse 13) as
her boyfriend and photographer Marcus. Carmen gets wind of a story
where a young American man named Eric Taylor disappeared while
traveling in Poland and wants to investigate. She also mentioned that
his luggage showed up in the Czech Republic despite never traveling
there. Her boss does not give her permission to go and instead gives
her a story covering bees that have gone missing. Carmen and her
intern Sara (Meghan Heffern, Chloe, The Fog) visit Eric's mother and
borrows his journal. Ignoring her boss, Carmen takes Sara and Marcus
to Eric's last known whereabouts: a small village in Poland called
Alvania. The find the villagers to be extremely secretive and
unwelcoming. They talk to a little girl and show her a picture of
Eric. She shows shock and fear at the picture, but a farmer named
Henryk (Trevor Matthews, Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer, Teen Massacre)
stops her from speaking to the group. Walking around, they take note
that the villagers all treat their religious leaders like royalty.
The walk out to the woods where a strange, unmoving fog hangs over
the land. Sara disappears into the fog and Carmen goes in to find
her. She comes across a large statue of a demon holding a heart. The
statue's eyes begin to bleed and the heart starts to beat. Both
Carmen and Sara escape the fog and begin to hear strange whispering.
As they head for their car, the little girl from before brings them
to a hidden tomb that contains the bodies of several people,
including Eric. Each body has a white robe on and a strange mask that
cannot be removed. They are locked in the tomb by the little girl and
have to pry the door open to escape. They are attacked by the
villagers who capture both Sara and Carmen while Marcus is forced to
dig a grave. The girls are taken to a sacrificial tomb and Sara is
strapped to an altar. Her wrists and Achilles' heels are slashed and
one of the masks is forcibly placed on her face, killing her. While
trapped, Carmen begins to see demonic faces on the villager's bodies.
Marcus is able to escape his captor and rescues Carmen, fleeing into
the woods. Will they be able to escape, what really happened in that
fog, and why are the villagers killing people?
Making her wear white after Labor Day? You monsters!
Have you ever
watched a movie and picked out scenes that were similar to 4 or 5
other movies? I kept doing that while watching The Shrine, more so
than any other horror movie to date. It doesn't help that they remind
me of much better horror movies that I'd rather be watching. The
general torture of Americans in a foreign land, combined with the
Achilles cutting scene reminded me of Hostel. The foreign land with a
weird , archaic religion is like The Wicker Man. On top of not being
completely original, the movie's biggest problem is that the story is
just not very good. There are a lot of holes in the plot that really
stuck with me. If the villagers know that going into the fog is a bad
idea, why don't they warn anybody? Put a sign up, erect a road block,
tell foreigners not to go in there. Something, anything to avoid this
apparently constant problem. Another issue I had was the character of
Sara. It was blatantly obvious from the beginning that she was there
just to be killed. She didn't have a lot of development or even a
love interest. A good amount of dialogue in the movie is in another
language (I'm assuming Polish). Normally, I much prefer movies taking
place in another country to be in it's native tongue. The problem is,
there are no subtitles, so I have no clue what is going on. If giving
away part of the plot is an issue, just rewrite things to keep the
story vague.
I kept waiting for
the story to lead to something important and that only happened in
the last 10 minutes or so. There is a decent twist in the movie, you
just have to wait an absurdly long time for it to happen, which is a
shame because the twist was far more interesting that a majority of
the movie. The movie touches on a few too many horror subgenres,
including torture, possession, and exorcism, which leave the movie
without a solid identity. There is a good amount of action and
violence, with the final scene upping the ante in terms of blood and
gore. If the rest of the movie had been like the last 10 minutes, I
would have enjoyed it a lot more. The acting is fine with no real
complaints. Composer Ryan Shore actually received a Grammy nomination
for the soundtrack, but I honestly don't remember anything about the
music in this movie.
"Sup, baby. What's a demon gotta do to get your number?"
A lot of things in
The Shrine just feel forced and rushed. The story progresses only
because the characters make terrible decisions. There are a lot of
plot holes and general annoyances that are too much to ignore. The
story is all over the place and hard to focus on, especially since a
lot of the dialogue is not in English. There is a good amount of
violence and some great gore at the end, but it's just not enough to
make you want to sit through everything else. The Shrine desperately
wanted to be all sorts of different horror movies and we end up with
something unoriginal and not terribly fun to watch.
4.5/10
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