Best movie of this year hands down!

Too much of everything

Sorry, this movie sucks

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

The most cliché group of teenagers decide to ditch their graduation party to spend a night in an abandoned and haunted hotel as a way of marking end of their youth, friendships etc. When I started watching this, I was ready for the usual sloppy horror movie, with terrible acting, terrible plot choices and, well, basically the usual stuff that all horror fans are already used to by this point. Although I have to say, that "Pray for Morning" did contain all of the previously mentioned things, it was also surprisingly entertaining.

This is a theme that has been done to death. Talking of death, although it will most certainly not frighten you to death, it may well bore you to death. A group of students or student types enter a haunted house for a dare, out of curiosity or necessity, and strange things happen, then spend the next hour walking around in the semi-dark. How thrilling. No, not exactly. Yes, you guessed it, somebody or more likely something is killing them, starting with the resident nymphomaniac and her boyfriend in the middle of a session. What a way to go.There are ghosts, some are or appear to be malevolent. Others...Seriously, if you can sit through this one in a single session without taking a break to watch something genuinely interesting - like watching paint dry - well, you're braindead if not dead already. True, there are a few special effects, but they are not very special. In the last third of the film we get to see what or who is behind the nightmare, a magician who has crossed over to the other side. There is something about a mysterious book, and as this guy is a murderer, why not resurrect the original detective on the case? Yeah, seriously, and at the end they all live happily ever after. Those who survive.

Pretentious is the word I'd use to describe this movie. The director went "to pains" for many of his special effects and prop pieces which were mediocre at best. The actors were terrible, and their characters severely underdeveloped. The pacing of the movie was also sluggish, as the majority of the kills were children twitching with blue light shining over them. They didn't reveal the ghost until too late in the movie, where you stopped caring.I was most disappointed by the fact that these teenagers appeared to be stupid from their dialogue, but were still able to solve plot points. They were intelligent enough to figure out the curse and puzzle; to figure out from a twenty-year-old bloodstain that the victim was trying to hide something; they could speak Latin, translate "hobo symbols" on the walls, and use old photographs as maps. Yet they died because they separated unnecessarily from the group and then just stood in the same place for extended periods of time. No I'm not talking about the ghosts telekinesis when he held them in place, I'm speaking namely about the character Topher, who stayed behind to cry while his friends didn't notice his absence until the ghost descended upon him. It was extremely artificial, and not in the least bit suspenseful.There are good points to the movie, as the characters seemed to genuinely enjoy each other's presence (save the obligatory fighting couple), which is a dynamic most movies miss on. There were a few good actors in the mix, even though they weren't playing with their best cards. And the story, if re-edited by a different company, could be genuinely interesting.It also had a beautiful and creepy soundtrack, and sometimes (note, sometimes) had the perfect atmosphere for a higher quality horror movie.

I personally thought that I would be in for a pleasant surprise but low and behold I was mistaken. I don't have any preconceptions about B movies I like to watch all kinds of quality work. This movie however, was not fun to watch. The plot is OK, it isn't written especially well but it's not that hard to listen to. The acting on the other hand was dreadful. I mean painful to watch. It wasn't the horror that had me cringing in my seat, it was the acting. I was looking for a hopeful for a glimpse of an up and coming actor in this movie, surely you won't find any one of the actors in upcoming A movies. They might be seen in one of those late night infomercials instead.For this one I say Thanks but No Thanks.