Seventh Moon (2008)

Really Surprised!

Must See Movie...

An Exercise In Nonsense

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

SEVENTH MOON is another missed opportunity from director Eduardo Sanchez, the man who brought us THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT back in 1999. It's quickly becoming obvious that Sanchez was a one-hit wonder and his subsequent movies have been forgettable at best. This is the worst I've seen from him, a stupid, all but plotless exercise in would-be scares, in which a miscast Amy Smart and her husband head off to China during the 'hungry ghost' festival. They encounter spirits and malignant beings while there, but the whole thing is shot in near pitch blackness so more often than not you have no idea what's going on. It's just two actors, a camera, and jumps here and there. Smart's incessant screaming becomes wearisome early on and the film just goes on and on and on without ending, so it's a good cure for insomnia. I'm afraid I hated every minute of it.

Based on a Chinese myth of the hungry ghosts that arrive one night a year in China. An offering is left for them as the dead rise through the gates of hell and look for offerings or victims. Melissa (Smart) and her Chinese/American husband Yul (Chiou) are on their honeymoon on this particular night as their tour guide Ping (Chan) gets lost in a rural part of China. Seeing a small village Ping says he is going to find help. Soon the couple finds themselves abandoned and later discover they have been left as sacrifices to the demon ghosts. The few glimpses they see of the pale figures on the road make them leave in a hurry. They come across a wounded man in the road and the demons attack all three of them once they get in the car. This becomes an all night test of survival as they fight for their lives. This relentless scare show from Director Eduardo Sanchez lays down an intriguing storyline and then opens the throttle to full blast. Let's start with the pale figured hungry ghosts. The design and look are eerily effective and Sanchez keeps them in shadows a lot. These are fierce buggers that pursue our couple and others in a truly frightening way. There is no let up and the suspense and scares are overwhelming. The pace is break-neck until the third act where it slows down enough to explain a little more. A chilling and nerve-wracking ending inside a cave is thrilling. Sanchez's story (writing with Jamie Nash) is creepy in itself. He knows how to write strong characters especially for women. Amy Smart is excellent in this role and her character is strong and heroic. In Sanchez's next film "Lovely Molly" he would repeat this strong Woman character. Part of the effectiveness of this film is having the characters out in the open in the middle of nowhere at night. Many tense moments have the couple hiding in tall grass as the pale figures are all around them. The pale figure hungry ghosts rank with the underground dwellers from "The Descent" as scariest creatures of recent memory. This is Eduardo Sanchez's scariest film to date and an excellent horror film packed with scares,

A pair of newlyweds decide to spend their honeymoon in China, where Yul (Tim Chiou) intends to visit his relatives, including his grandmother Nai Nai. His love Melissa (Amy Hart) finds joy in their first days of stay, extremely pleased with the exotic appeal of the Hungry Ghost festival. After this event they drive out to finally visit Yul's family, only for their driver Ping (Dennis Chan) to get lost somewhere in the Chinese countryside. He goes into a small village to ask for directions, but fails to return. Yul and Melissa set out to find him, but instead encounter offerings of live animals. Apparently the ghosts are not a myth, but actually the Asian cousins of the crawlers (from the movie "Descent").Eduardo Sánchez of "Blair With Project" fame executes his new endeavour with some old-style classical frights mixed with some of his trademark hand-held camera filming. All mounted assuredly on the shoulders of a rather traditional and unadventurous script together with some rip-off monsters. In short - nothing really innovative or creative of note. That said all elements are well handled. The eeriness, frights and basic storytelling is all present and as such manage to engage for the duration. Several plot points to stick out like a sore thumb and given how little of a story there actually was it is a major flaw of the movie. The biggest irk is the seemingly unresolved issue of Yul's final wish.Nonetheless a horror with a very classical feel to it. It won't get extra marks for pushing any boundaries, but definitely heads over heels above most horrors churned out nowadays. The rating on IMDb does seem on the low side for my taste, especially given how highly graded dozens of craptacular genre pieces are.Both leads do a decent enough job to make you care for their fate, but the script would have done better with some further character build-up. As it is the movie feels awkwardly rushed in many places, but overlong in others. Despite not being a hand-held camera fan I found that this time around it worked especially well and added some gritty tension to the story delivery.

Well, I didn't read any reviews about this movie so as not to be negatively or positively affected. But 3 minutes into the film, I just couldn't make out anything. I even went to fetch my glasses because I thought I wasn't seeing clearly or something, but even that didn't help! The camera work was nauseating, it gave me a headache from all the eye twitching! I believe this movie's plot could have been played out much better because the story does have potential being a traditional legend and all. The initial scenes were colourful, nicely shot and very traditional but for the way the rest of the movie was shot, a huge NO no ... I rated it 5* just for the story and the initial scenes.