The Invoking (2013)

One of the worst movies I've ever seen

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

I decided to give this one a go simply because of the praise on the cover from media outlets such as FearNet and Fangoria. Well, all I have to say is that those companies have surely let their standards slip over the years. This had potential to be an interesting little indie flick, but it fell flat on it's face thanks to a severely disjointed storyline, some messy design choices and an ugly look overall that just gives the idea that the filmmakers really weren't trying that hard in the areas the should have been. And most of the acting is pretty awful too. Don't make the same mistake I did.

Reasons why you should not watch this movie: Bad dubbing or sound technique. Spent the first ten minutes of the movie trying to figure out if was dubbed or sound was just off track. Underdeveloped story. Characters you will never learn to care about, but will find yourself hoping they die early on in the film, which they won't! An ending that makes you think "WTF, that's it". And it's not even the thought provoking kind of ending. Please heed the reviews and spend your time elsewhere. Also, don't be fooled by the picture on IMDb for the movie. That is not the house in the movie, and there is nothing remotely scary or creepy about this film.

You might be confused by my summary above if you haven watched this movie. I named it such because those two lines made up about half of the entire movie's dialogue. This movie is ridiculous; it is very difficult to follow because of its slow pace and lack of storyline. Every character is unlikeable: an adopted woman name Sam who inherits a house from her biological family, a sound person (for what reason, I'm unsure, because it's never clarified), an obnoxious blond, a friend of Sam who apparently has an abusive past that we hear about once but is never clarified, and a creepy neighbor, who keeps bringing up his past with Sam but never fully explains everything. If you like a lot of running in the woods, repeated questions, and a story with holes in it, then this is the movie for you!

Who writes the plot summaries for movies. Some writers who do this are either being paid well or have an honesty issue. Any film put out by "Ruthless Pictures" immediately reeks of cheap. 1. So subtitles; poor inconsistent audio level control. 2. Lots of wasted time (50% of the movie?) watching people drive around; sit; stand; sit some more and really cheap mood enhancement technique of prolonged shots of trees and more trees. I will admit that without leaves these trees looked pretty dead. 3. Acting and dialogue was the usual cheap memorize a short line say it for the camera; edit; shoot the next short memorized line; on and on and on. 4. The old standby assistant to the hand held shaky camera was having an actor carry around a Goodwill/pawn shop castoff cassette tape recorder. Why? Who knows. Well, he like to record sounds which ended up being more wasted film time and went nowhere.