Highly Overrated But Still Good

Don't Believe the Hype

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

This film is one of the best horror films I have ever seen in my life. This film may not be scary but its very disturbing and this is the true definition of horror. I don't understand why this film is rated 5.6 out of the 10 in imdb because this is a very fantastic film and it deserves at least a 9 out of the 10 overall. Great acting. Good picture quality, very interesting and fun story, perfect sounds effects, and realistic special effects are really good. This film deserves awards and if you're a horror fan, you definitely need to see this!

Eastern Europe is undoubtedly attractive to today's American horror films. Movies like "Hostel" or "Chernobyl Diaries" have made good use of the gloomy environment of these regions and the virtually void knowledge that American public has about them. This is another of these films, setting in Poland where, curiously, everyone can speak English well, even if loaded with a forced accent. The story happens in a small village, apparently stopped in time, where locals are very hostile with foreigners. What tourists are unaware of is that they seek to keep a terrible secret from the eyes of the world, which insists on entering through their doors. This could be extremely xenophobic to the peaceful and friendly Polish people if, in the end, the story did not completely change its tone (I will not tell you what happens to not spoil it). To summarize it is enough to say that the film has a vulgar script punctuated by some original solutions, always misused, a third class cast that never surpasses average and to whom were given mediocre characters and a very bad sound, visual and special effects, direct consequence of the low production budget. The natural result is a histrionic film that is far from good, reaching only a bearable quality.

THE SHRINE is a Canadian horror film set in Poland. To begin with the plot is nothing special, involving the usual trio of American tourists abroad who find themselves in trouble when they stumble upon a grove containing an ancient shrine that has something evil about it. The second half of the film gets a little more interesting by skewing the usual angles and builds to an impressively high octane climax.The problem with this film is the lack of budget. There isn't much money to go around so the director substitutes noise with quality. This is one of the noisiest horror films I can remember watching and particularly at the climax it gets very headache-inducing. Plus the usual EXORCIST clichés are played out again which is a bit wearying. On the plus side, there's some very graphic gore in this film and it's nasty stuff indeed, wince-inducing in places. Shawn Ashmore's twin brother Aaron stars.

Trying to investigate a missing person's case, a reporter and her friends travel to Poland to follow up on their clues only to find the suspect's involvement in a deadly cult and are forced to fight them off to get away alive.Overall this one turned out to be quite an enjoyable if slightly flawed effort. One of the better aspects to this one is the rather impressive and enjoyable atmosphere throughout here, which makes for a lot of impressive moments within here. The initial walk-through of the group of the village is quite impressive as there's a large amount of creepy visuals that are rightly observed to be their traditional way of life in such a situation and no moralizing is done anyway which is a nice touch while also really getting this going for the big reveal here in the revelation of the fog cloud surrounding the tree-line that's quite eerie as well. Those later scenes in the fog-cloud are highly creepy as well with the obscured trees and thick fog providing the perfect blanket for the reveal of the statue which is quite scary and chilling as well as the ensuing marks to get away that generates some fine action in the woodland chase and eventual escape as well as the brawling with the cult members and finally the film's first rather impressive scene in the sacrificial room. These chilling scenes and the eventual escape, resulting in the finale's absolutely delirious amount of chases through the woods and into the house on the outskirts, the demonic possession that follows the utterly chilling tactic of the deformed demons in her mind and finally into the big confrontation with the group at the end which makes for a lot of good, creepy images and ideas strewn throughout this one. Along with the gory kills, these positives are enough to hold off the few minor flaws in this one. The biggest one being the first half spending way too much time on ensuring that the whole trip is set-up for them to be cut off from help, with the errant cover-story and secrecy surrounding it all just filling up time needlessly by hammering it home when it's already been established about that fact. Also, the fact that this continues a long, long trend of films in which the entirety of the events could've easily been avoided had something useful been passed along to the participants instead of simply kept secret does render this one with a mildly irritating factor, but otherwise this one was highly enjoyable.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, Brief Nudity, violence-against-animals and children-in-jeopardy including an assumed violent kill.