Dementia 13 Movie Review

Dementia 13 is basically a lesser version of You’re Next with a ghost and no A.J. Bowen (lady boner status). It is also of the Coppola movie. If you think you can remake a Coppola movie, you are wrong. However, they could do this because the movie itself is in the public domain, so anyone with a camera can remake it. The story of this masterpiece *cough sarcasm cough* is that a family goes back to their fancy castle home because rich people are always owning castles, especially when you are from the Upper East Side. Makes all the sense. They are tormented by a ghost, there is also a murderer on the loose wielding an axe and this family happens to be the target of a long con put upon by the oldest son, Johnny.

Ok. Deep breath. What was the point of this movie? If you wanted a ghost story, make a ghost story. If you wanted a family killing spree for inheritance type movie, make that movie. By combining the three different stories, it ends up looking half-assed and as our good buddy Ron Swanson says, “Never half-ass two things, whole-ass one thing.” The acting is, at best, low-grade soap opera worthy, with too many delayed reactions, missed beats and just straight up not convincing. No one looks truly scared, it looks like they are playing scared. Huge difference.

You feel nothing for any of these characters because they are all garbage humans who would rather kill their family and get the inheritance than spend quality time together. If you want to make your character unlikeable, that is fine, by all means do it, but get good actors and a better script. This movie gives us nothing to work with. At least with a film like You’re Next, you believe that they love each other for some of the film and you can almost see their point about why they want to kill their family. It’s not right, but they are convincing.

You will find this in a discount bin for $4.99 soon enough. I had high hopes for this castle that they barely utilize. Don’t make a movie in a castle and only go in three rooms.  I’m giving it one star because no matter what happens in this film, Channing Pickett’s hair is perfect. My hair will never look that good ever, let alone if someone is trying to kill me.