Starring: Joanna Canton, Richard Trapp, Adrienne Barbeau, Coolio    Directed by: Mike Mendez    Written by: Chaton Anderson

The Story: I didn't expect to like this movie as much as I did. Nowadays whenever you find a horror movie its "inspired" by Scream, and I'll be honest. I didn't really like Scream that much. I also don't like movies that try to hard to be "hip" or "modern". Usually the references to pop culture are so overbearing in that "nudge-nudge-wink-wink ain't it cool" way that the movie ends up being annoying rather than scary or entertaining. This flick didn't do too badly in The Inferno. It had some silly parts and it boasts the standard types of characters for this type of film, but overall it worked.

The standard characters are the usual group of idiotic College students...Clarissa (called Ris) and her dopey brother, Brant, Mo, Clarissa's Goth friend, Caitlin the vain bimbo, (and she even wears a cheerleader uniform) Frijole, the obnoxious dope smoker that tries way too hard to be cool, Frijole's dog, Boozer, Chad, the jock (Ris' boyfriend), and Biff, the other jock. Together they decide to check out the old Convent in town that's been abandoned. Urban legend has it that 40 years ago a girl named Christine was forced into having an abortion in the basement by Father Ryan and various nuns. For revenge she busted into the chapel during mass swigging whiskey and blowing nuns away with a shotgun. then she set them on fire. The Convent is supposed to be haunted by them now. Why anyone would want to party there is beyond me, but in the movies kids always want to party in abandoned buildings that are inhabited by ghosts and demons. Brant, who is definitely in need of some self-esteem, tags along because he's pledging to the Lambda Fraternity (the other guys are members of it) and they treat him like a turd. Funk Dat. I never joined a Frat in college because no one was gonna treat me like that.

Nothing really happens when they first explore the place. Ris sees a ghostly nun, but no one else does and thus no one believes her. The little expedition is broken up when the police arrive. Every year they find some kids trying to party in the place and every time they shoo them off with a good cop/ bad cop act. The police in question are officers Ray and Starkey. I mention their names only because Starkey is played by Coolio....so I'll just call him Officer Coolio. See what I mean about movies trying to be all hip and modern? I don't have anything against Coolio, but I've never seen a cop with hair like that. I don't think any police department in the nation would allow it. If he wasn't Coolio they would've just gotten some nameless actor to play the part and the second scene with Starkey probably would've been written out of the script. Anyway, Mo is on probation so she asks Frijole to lie and say she went home to the cops while she hides in the convent. He does so and the kids leave to a nearby diner, where Ris chastises them for leaving Mo in the ruined building. She demands that they go back to get her. At first the others refuse. After all, these guys are real pricks....see why I didn't join a fraternity?...but eventually relent and they all go back to recover Mo. But Mo has more problems. She grabbed from behind by....Saul, the Dairy Queen Guy! Actually Saul is dressed up in some kind of crazy ass Alistair Crowley get-up and has some "followers". Saul and his friends, "Dickie-Boy" and some busty chicks are closet Satanists. In other words they're pathetic people that think they're Satanists. They want to sacrifice Mo to the lord of Darkness because they overheard her telling Frijole that she's a virgin. At first I didn't think they'd really do it, but they tie her up and stab her. And to their surprise she becomes possessed instantly, just as her friends start splitting up and searching the convent for her. Here's where the movie started reminding me of Night of the Demons. The demon Mo attacks and kills Saul's female companions who in turn become possessed. Then they start attacking Ris and her friends. Brant is spared because he's wandering around on his own looking for Boozer who ran off. Ris soon finds herself surrounded by her possessed friends but manages to climb out of a window and run for help.

The first person she sees is Officer Coolio, who starts shooting at her for some unknown reason. I'm telling ya, if it wasn't Coolio this scene wouldn't be in the movie. Ris then goes to the campus to tell someone in authority what's happened. No, that's not what she does. That's what someone would do in real life. Instead she runs to the house where Christine lives. Christine, forty years after the abortion in the convent is known as a crazy old lady. (They say she spent some time in the nut house) However, Christine is really Adrienne Barbeau and is as tough as nails. Ris pleads for help because Christine is the only one who can do something. I don't how she came to that conclusion, but it must be common knowledge in those parts. Christine even confirms this by telling Ris every few years some dumbass kids go to the convent to smoke dope and raise demons by accident. Then they come screaming to her and she has to deal with it. You'd think that if this happened every few years more people would be aware of the demonic presence in the convent, but hey, I didn't write the movie. Anyway, Christine tells Ris what really happened at the convent.

According to Christine the nuns were all possessed by a demon....because....uh,...I don't know. Just roll with it. After all, her flashbacks are pretty hilarious, because no one...not even the most dedicated Catholic School student...would sit there in class quietly when a demonic looking nun with glowing eyes writes "Hail Satan" on a chalkboard. The nuns didn't perform an abortion on her. They took the baby to be used as a host body for the Antichrist. Apparently a virgin is needed for this. Christine went on her shotgun spree in the chapel to stop the ceremony and save her baby. Which she did. Christine tells Ris that her son is a civil engineer in Peoria. Afterwards Christine was sent to an institution and the whole urban legend about the abortion sprung up. Its fortunate for Ris that Christine is a hard drinkin' gun totin'' biker bitch now. She suits up, grabs a miniature arsenal and rides off on her hog to dispatch the demons. At first she's not keen on the idea, but when Ris tells her that Brant is still in the convent, probably still alive and definitely a virgin Christine knows the demons are gonna try to complete the ritual and turn Brant into the Antichrist.

Usually I don't like comic relief in horror movies that much, but in this case its not that crappy. Brant runs into Saul and Dickie-Boy who are trying to evade the demons. Saul figures that he can reverse the spell and send the demons back to Hell if he sacrifices Brant. They try but these two bozos can't manage to do it, so the demons capture them, killing Saul but tying Brant and Dickie-Boy up. Both of 'em are virgins so I guess the demons are trying to get a two-fer-one thing going on. Meanwhilst Christine and Ris show up and start blazing away at the demons and chopping their heads off...which I guess is the only way to really kill them. You gotta love it when Ris, who earlier was frightened out of her skull and told Christine she'd never handled a gun before turns into freaking Ellen Ripley and starts chucking lead at demons like nobody's business. Ripley....I mean, Ris and Christine make it to the chapel just in time to stop the demon nuns from sacrificing Brant, but not in time to save Dickie-Boy. Dickie-Boy changes into the Son of Satan before their eyes. Christine has one idea left. She tells Brant and Ris to run for it, revs the engine on her bike and lights The Most Powerful Molotov Cocktail In The Known Universe. Then she rams into the Devil's spawn blowing up the chapel and sending the hell beasts back to...er...Hell. Really, that's one helluva Molotov cocktail. She must have used plutonium in it or something because it causes one big ass explosion. When the dust clears the sun comes up and the only ones left alive are Brant, Ris and Boozer, who wanders up to them. Of course the movie can't end without us seeing that Boozer is possessed.

You know what pleased me? The demons were made to look supernatural with that jerky camera thing seen on MTV a lot, but not overdone. In other words they didn't just say "This effect looks kewl, dood...lets use it A LOT!". There was a lot of fluorescent paint and glowing blood , but it didn't go too far. Trust me, droogies, I don't have a lot of patience with such things so the fact that they didn't make me pull my hair out with overused effects is a high point. Joanna Canton, who I've never seen before was Ris. Richard Trapp, who I've also no recollection of seeing before was Brant. Coolio was called Starkey, but Funk Dat...he was Coolio. And Adrienne Barbeau was the bad-ass Christine. Chaton Anderson, who incidentally wrote the screenplay and acted in the small part of Sapphira, one of Saul's followers under the name Chaton Itae.

Best Lines: "You know Karate? 'Cuz that ass is kickin'!"- Frijole tries to woo the ladies. He's an asshole and its a stupid line, but it did make me chuckle.

"I'm gonna lock your ass up so tight they're gonna need a combination to visit your nuts....white boy!"- Officer Coolio. Now that was a funny line.

"They [unwrite]ing love virgins! God Damned Demons! Its always something with a virgin!"- Christine tries to explain what really happened at the convent 40 years ago.

"My Brother's gonna be the new Anti-Christ? Mom's gonna be pissed!"- Ris when Christine explains what the Demons really want. Stupid line, but again, it made me laugh.

 Are you kidding me?

1.) Man, it happened again. Someone (in this case, Ris) sees an apparition in a supposedly haunted place and doesn't leave immediately. Who cares if no one else believes you, Ris? Just go!

2.) When the *snicker* 13th Coven captures Mo she recognizes the cult leader, Saul, as the guy that works at Dairy Queen. This scene is pretty funny, but I noted that while the closed captioning did read "Dairy Queen", the actual words spoken are "Dairy CREAM". I guess they couldn't get any kind of agreement with Dairy Queen to use the name.

3.) Holy shiznits! The fake ass Satanists pulled it off! When they get ready to sacrifice Mo I really thought the knife they used would be one of those novelty knives where the blade either bends because its really rubber or retracts into the handle, but apparently it was a real knife....and Mo changes into a demon and starts kickin' ass and killing the "white trash posers" as she calls them! Which raises the question....why would anyone even want to summon the forces of Hell? Didn't occur to these knuckleheads that having a demon in your midst might be a bad thing?

4.) None of these kids are brain surgeons, but Biff at least gets the Infernal Award for Righteous Action. When the demonized chicks attack him and Caitlin he turns and runs after Caitlin gets her face ripped off instead of trying to fight them off. Its not much, but its the smartest move he could have made.

5.) At least now I know never to go to Coolio if I need help. As a police officer, he sucks. When Ris escapes the demon infested convent she finds Officer Coolio and screams for help. Coolio,  seeing her drenched in blood starts screaming "I cast you out Demon Bitch! Away with you damned creatures of the Night!" and shoots at her! This guy is a cop? What does he do if you get a speeding ticket? Beat you with a tire iron? "I cast you out runner of stop signs! Away with you non-driving motha-f***a!"?

6.) Is the entire planet inhabited by ant-brained nincompoops in this movie!? Christine's flashbacks of what really happened in the convent show Demonized nuns walking past students in the hallway and none of these kids haul ass! Its not like you can't SEE that they're demons! That's not something you just blow off, people! If these troglodytes are too stupid to vacate the area they practically deserve to get slaughtered!

7.) I don't know who taught Ris how to put on makeup but that blue eye shadow she has on is tacky as hell where I come from. Not that I should complain. Girls that wore [unwrite] like that when I was growing up were called easy.

Nudity and Sex: None.

Huh?:

Any drug users out there? I don't have any experience in street pharmacy. So tell me, would smoking some joints and eating some mushrooms make you so high that you can't recognize extreme danger? I've had friends that got high and none of them became as stupid as Frijole. (admittedly that's a whole lot of stupid, even before he started smoking the loco-weed) When Frijole walks in on the now demonized Mo he doesn't seem to realize that the music and lightshow in this abandoned building....not to mention the figurine of Christ speaking to him...ain't normal operating procedure.

Here's something really scary. Saul...the Dairy Queen guy that poses as the leader of the *snicker* 13th Coven has a pretty dopey follower named Dickie-Boy (how appropriate). I mean dopey. This guy is just plain dumb. but then, so is Ris' brother Brant. Dickie-Boy guy is so dumb he falls for Saul's Prince of Darkness act and is willing to commit murder and sacrifice Brant....and Brant is so stupid he's just gonna lay there thinking that he's going to get laid even though he just met these two nimrods and he's blindfolded. (not to mention there aren't any girls there). Here's the bit that's scary....I've met people that I think are that stupid in real life. Recently. (I could frighten you more and tell you they're High School Graduates and some are even in college....the only good thing about them being stupid is none of the passed the screening exam for the Armed Forces.)

Whoa. Brant's living my nightmare. Trapped by demons that want to sacrifice him because he's a virgin with another male virgin that wants to have sex with him so they won't be virgins anymore. At least Brant has enough sense to refuse Dickie-Boy's advances. I wouldn't want my final act on this Earth to be getting drilled in the ass by a dude named Dickie-Boy, either.

At the end of the movie, we see Ris sitting in her room talking to the house mother. She tells Ris that at least she's getting a 4.0 this semester? From where, jail? How the heck does she explain the deaths of all of her friends, AND Christine plus the breaking and entering in the abandoned convent (TWICE! The 2nd time after the cops told her and the gang of morons to beat it) plus arson since the place went up in blaze?

The Final Judgment: You won't find a lot of recent horror movies that don't suck so you might want to think about watching this one. Its not the Be-All and End-All of horror cinema, its not even a fresh take on an old plot, but it is entertaining enough. The  Infernal Hordes recommend it to you next time you go looking for a horror movie. I damn sure liked it better than the over rated Scream.