The Hunters

Ever watch a movie that was described as one thing, only to discover that it was actually something else? Well, if it annoys you as much as it does me, then skip watching The Hunters altogether. It's not  the movie described on the envelope, that's for sure. Anyway, enjoy the following SPOILERS...

The opening scene shows some dude sneaking around near a rock wall. He seems pretty afraid of whatever he's avoiding. After a few seconds, we can hear why: He can hear frightened screams coming from all around him. Creepy.

Then we switch over to a father and son out hunting. The title comes up, and another hunter arrives. It turns out that the dad is Oliver, and he's stressed out by both his marriage and work-related stuff. The other guy hears something, and it turns out to be Oliver's son, Ronny, and another man named Bernard.

Then we meet a guy named LeSaint, a French-Canadian cop. He meets his new boss, Bernard, who we just met with his hunting buddies a few days ago. Le Saint would like to pursue a lead he thinks he has on several missing persons cases, but Bernard orders him to meet with a mob informant instead.

That night, LeSaint has a flashback to an incident back when he was a soldier in Iraq, when an explosive nearly killed him. That somehow turns into a sex dream, then into a nightmare where he's limping down a hall, under a red light. I hope that wasn't important because it flew over my head!

We see Oliver again, hard at work installing software for a busy office building. Oh, and then he and his hunting buddies discuss going out again that weekend. This movie makes watching paint dry seem compelling.

LeSaint goes jogging, and chats with Alice, a cute female who goes jogging along the same route. They flirt, then she tells her friends about him at dinner. Oh, and Oliver is at the same restaurant. He and the group with Alice all get "fortune scrolls" from a grinning homeless man, and all are drawings of a skeleton.

LeSaint goes to work, and tells his boss that the mayor has given him permission to investigate the disappearances. Bernard goes nuts and screams at him. LeSaint meets his cute jogging body, and she gives him something that she baked. He eats it, then tells her that it sucked. Oh, and she tells him that her name is Alice. See that? Insult her cooking, and she's putty in your hands.

Everyone in the precinct is hurrying out on a bust when LeSaint returns from his run, and he gets a call from his informant when he's alone. They make plans to meet at an old historical site, Fort Goben.

Lesaint has more nightmares, then heads to his meeting at Fort Goben. He sees one guy lingering, but the stranger keeps moving. Another man speeds by on a dirt bike, and a few stragglers just stare at the cop.

LeSaint hears screams and voices inside, and it turns out to be Ronny and Oliver. Oliver spots LeSaint, and he warns him that the property is private. When the cop mentions the screams he heard, the others get nervous, and warn him away again.

LeSant starts to go, and meets his informant having his lunch on a bench. They decide to leave together, but the exit is chained shut. Behind them, at the entrance to the fort grounds, the hunters are waiting for them. The armed foursome split up, with 2 running to the left of the doorway, and the other 2 heading right.

Francois(the informant) shoots down the chains on the door, but there's a drawbridge still preventing them from escaping. Francois tries to flank some of the hunters, but a single shot literally tears his leg off. Then another weapon sets him on fire.

Alone now with the hunters, LeSaint tries to get away, and is hit in the neck with a tranquilizer dart. He wakes up next to a fire. and sees the hunters doing weird shit, before he passes out again. When he wakes up again, he grabs a torch and decides to explore the nearest tunnel.

He hears somebody screaming, and witnesses a guy getting beaten to a pulp, then beheaded. The killer takes the head to a "trophy room", and adds it to the collection. Then the killer leaves, giggling and ranting.

LeSaint explores the room after he goes, and realizes that he was right about the disappearances. Then he finds himself facing the killer, who is doing a drugged-out sort of dance, before playing with another severed head. The guy laughs and runs around the room, making LeSaint dizzy.

Then the killer vanishes, and reemerges dressed in black and wearing a ski mask. They fight hand-to-hand, and the killer grabs an ax. It gets caught up in a chain, and LeSaint manages to plunge the killer's new weapon into his chest, leaving the deranged lunatic to die a painful death.

LeSaint calls Bernard, unaware that his boss is one of the hunters. He tells his boss everything he knows, and Bernard assures him that help is on the way. Oh, and he tells Bernard(and the other hunters) that he will dress in the clothes of the hunter that he just killed. After the call, the hunters freak out, one of them(Ronny) cries like a baby, and Bernard tries to get them all back on track. To sum it up...they're all bonkers.

LeSaint reverts back to his army training, and uncovers some booby traps. In an ionic twist, Bernard also sees the new traps, and realizes that his team has been spending extra time at the fort without him. Anyway, LeSaint dresses as William, and begins looking for the others. Oliver and Stephen "pretend" to recognize "William", but it's obvious that LeSaint is a dead duck. He takes off, and they chase him.

LeSaint leaps down a small incline, then skids down a steeper one, removing the ski mask along the way. He has a shoot out with Oliver, then hits Stephen with a stray bullet. That pisses off Oliver, who exposes himself to open fire, and gets hit in the shoulder. That causes his next bullet to go astray, killing his son. As he fires wildly at LeSaint out of grief, Oliver is killed by the cop.

Bernard watches Ronny have a nervous breakdown, and just follows and watches. Then we meet a young couple, David and Alice. Whoops, we already met Alice. LeSaint finds them, and freaks out. He urges them to leave, and pulls out his weapon.

As the pair exit the fort, loony Ronny pulls his rifle out, and aims it at several areas of the guy's body. He knocks Alice to the ground, then shoots the boyfriend in the chest. Ronny corners Alice, but LeSaint gets him with about 7 rounds or so at point blank. Then the cop gets Alice to leave, so he can handle the aftermath.

But first, Bernard needs to be finished off. He does it to himself, by stepping on a pressurized landmine. BOOM! Several clips of the hunters are shown, and they seem to be having a grand time in the past. Maybe a magical film strip can bring them back as goofballs.

Months later, LeSaint is sitting in a coffee shop, staring off into space. Then Alice strolls in, and they sit together. She asks him again to reveal his name to her. THE END

This thing was pretty generic, to the point where it almost seemed to be a TV-movie. It probably was, for some Canadian network. Not the worst, but not even close to the best. I'm giving this one 2.5 trees, ya hoser!

And what did I learn from The Hunters?

-Well, apparently 1 movie can have about 6,000 different plot descriptions, and none of them can get it right!

-Everyone needs a trophy room filled with human heads.

-If you need to have a confidential rendezvous, DON'T go to an old fort!

Coming up next is either a very promising-looking movie called Smiley, or an equally creepy-looking one called Tormented. Which will it be?

Phantom of The Mall: Eric's Revenge

Okay, so this week, I'm a little bit discombobulated. I'm moving to a new apartment this week, and things here are half-packed, and pretty crazy. Anyway, while I have a moment to relax, here's this week's movie...Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge! Get ready for massive SPOILERS...

The opening scene leaves us in the dark, literally speaking. There's a figure removing items from a mannequin and stealing a crossbow, until a security guard discovers him. The mysterious intruder kills the guard, and then the opening credits roll. This movie is like the slasher-movie version of The Love Boat: among the supporting cast, we have Rob Estes, Ken Foree, Morgan Fairchild, and even Pauly Shore!

After the credits(which are shown in front of flames...Did a screensaver kick in?), there's a generic ground-breaking ceremony on the day the mall opens. Yay. An enthusiastic crowd is at the ceremony, and they're all acting like the President is there as well.

At a restaurant called Sleuth's(?), a teen named Melody is busy interviewing for a waitress position. Then we head back to the ceremony, as Mayor Karen(Morgan Fairchild) unveils a replica of the mall, and reveals plans to build many more features on to it.

Then Melody finds her best friend Suzie, and they decide to celebrate Melody's successful interview. As the Mayor wraps up her speech, a young photojournalist (A young...er version of Rob Estes) sees the 2 girls, and decides that a grown man getting candid shots of teenagers isn't creepy in the least. He's the Woody Allen of journalism!

Eric the Phantom is watching the whole thing from an air duct. He crawls away to his secret lair, and circles July 4th on his calendar, the date of another mall-related publicity stunt. I hope nothing else big is happening on that date. Then he cuts apart a mannequin head's face, to make himself a mask. So, just to make this clear...He can steal a calendar and enough stuff to build a comfy little room, but he can't just steal one simple mask? Huh???

The girls head to a yogurt shop run by their friend Buzz, played by a young, normal-sounding Pauly Shore. He prepares a dessert order, then he unintentionally contaminates it with something pinkish that looks like either stretched-out gum or a retainer. Either way, I'll never go to a frozen yogurt stand after today!

Mayor Karen just happens to be wandering by with a crowd of journalists(Okay, seriously, this is more media coverage than we saw at Pope Benedict's retirement party! WHY???), and Photographer Pete gets to take another picture of his next date-rape victim. He's much creepier than our Phantom, man!

Eric moves through his "tunnel", while Pete flirts with Melody. He mentions that he was the journalist who took her photo during the aftermath of the fire that claimed her boyfriend, and he reminds her that she saw someone suspicious at the scene. The memory upsets her, and Pete apologizes for bringing it up. They both agree that there may have been a conspiracy to cover up the crime.

As Melody opens her employee locker, she finds a bouquet of pink orchids, the same flowers that Eric used to surprise her with. Eh, probably just a coincidence. Oh, and there's a brief flashback to a time when Melody's boyfriend wasn't a scarred-up, psychotic stalker, but just a nice guy buying his nice girlfriend some nice flowers. Nice.

Suzie and Buzz swoop in awkwardly, and Buzz suggests that he and Pete speak privately, while Suzie and Melody do the same. Buzz then advises Pete to find another girl to date, because of Melody's troubled past. Hey Buzz, how 'bout you "you" off...

A tightwad named Harv, who has a lot riding on the financial success of the mall, tries to tell his headbanger son to exit the premises, because the kid wrecked his car. They have a quiet spat, and the son leaves. Fascinating plot development.

Buzz tells Pete about the night Eric "died", and the headbanger rudely brushes past them. Then Pete asks Buzz if the fire at Eric's house was arson. Like Buzz would know! He can't even keep his frozen yogurt from getting crap in it!

Up in the air ducts, Eric sees a maintenance worker crawling around ahead of him. He sneaks up on the worker, then forces his face through some fast-moving fan blades. Harv, who just happens to be standing underneath the very section where the murder is occurring, hears some of the assault, but isn't quite sure of what he's hearing. Sharp guy, that Harv.

In a clothing store's changing room, Suzie, Melody, and a few others are getting gratuitously nude, as a security guard watches on a security cam.  His co-worker warns him that Harv is coming in, so the screen gets switched off. A second later, Harv arrives, asking them to check the ventilation ducts for "knocking noises". As soon as he leaves, they switch the monitor back on...right before the perv is told to leave and investigate the air vent noises.

Pervy, being true to his nature, decides to crawl right on over the vent to the changing room. He giggles and makes dumb jokes, then goes to a restricted area of the mall to investigate. He emerges from the tunnel into a high voltage area, where the knocking seems to be louder. From out of the shadows, Eric pushes a cart into the poor guy, pinning him to an electrical panel. One of Pervy's eyes explodes out of his head, and lands in a container of frozen yogurt. I wonder if the writer of Clint Howard's Ice Cream Man  drew inspiration from this scene?

There's also a short, pointless scene where we see Melody and Suzie leave the clothing store. They pass by a piano player, who wishes them a good evening. Wasn't that worthy of wasting 1 minute of screen time? Any random shoppers want a line or two?

Anyway, we switch back to Harv. Mayor Karen walks into his office to congratulate him on a successful opening day, and offers him a seat on the city council. Fun Fact: the actor playing Harv is also the Dos Equis guy...Stay thirsty, my friends!

After the mayor makes her exit, the mutilated corpse of the security guy falls through the ceiling, landing on Harv's desk. Then we watch Suzie and Melody leave the mall and part ways. Melody's car won't start, When she gets out to look under the hood, a figure in black assaults her! Eric?

Nope. The Phantom is watching from a distance. As Melody tries to push her attacker away, Eric uses a crossbow to fire an arrow into the stranger's shoulder. The mayor drives up, and the would-be rapist escapes.

We see the body on Harv's desk up close, and there's a note on his uniform: AN EYE FOR AN EYE. Harv makes a phone call, and tells the person on the other end that he may need to hire him/her "again", which sounds rather ominous. Maybe it's a Stripper-gram. Or not.

Melody tells the mayor everything she can remember about her attacker, and includes the bit about the arrow. The mayor offers to drive her home, while she contacts the police herself. Do I smell a cover-up? Maybe...or just a stinky script.

Pete does some research, and finds an article about the fire. Then he has a flashback(pretty nifty, considering he wasn't there) where we see a scuzzy dude starting the fire at Eric's place. That segues into a scene where Eric and Melody are making love, which is treated like soap opera sex.

The music takes on a sinister tone, and Melody realizes that she saw who the arsonist was. And now he's screwing her in her dream. It all has to do with some earring, believe it or not. Then she wakes up.

Buzz and Pete meet up at the mall again, and they each need to do something important. Meanwhile, Eric is in his hideout, practicing some kickboxing moves. Someone wake me up when something interesting happens. I'm assuming no one will be waking me in the near future.

Harv tells the security chief that he fired Pervy last night, to keep the murder a secret. Then he hears that a third guard also went missing, which throws him...well, off-guard. He quickly tries to cover that up as well. This would have made a great Oliver Stone script!

Harv's son, meanwhile, is humping a pinball machine in the arcade. Remember the days when pinball was played in an arcade, instead of in a video game? The kid waits for the proprietor to leave his position at the front counter, then breaks into the machine to steal quarters. Bet he dies soon. Harv sees him in the mall, and flips out. He walks over to yell at his son, only to get a face full of soda spraying from a can. The son strolls away, laughing, while Harv tries to clean himself up.

Eric does more fight moves, while playing his and Melody's "song". Oh, and he watches a video of her, made up of stalker footage. How, um...romantic? Yeah, not so much.

Buzz takes Pete to the security area, and plays him some Hawaiian-sounding muzak. As Pete prepares to walk out, Buzz reveals that there are subliminal messages beneath the tune, urging customers to spend large amounts of money. Pete admits that the tape is creepy, but not illegal.

He starts to leave again, then sees a shifty character wearing a security uniform. It's the guy from Melody's nightmare, which, again, I must point out Pete wasn't a witness to. Pete runs out of the room, and tracks down the guy. He takes a photo of him, then the creepy guard decides to chase him.

They run around in different areas of the mall, like a food court and some escalators, until Pete narrowly escapes into a glass elevator. As he relaxes, the guard hangs upside-down on the top of the elevator, and even makes a comical snarling sound. I hate to admit this, but this movie's entertaining in a really dumb way.

Off of the elevator, the chase resumes. The shady pursuer collides with a guy hauling boxes, and stops chasing Pete long enough to get into a fistfight. Pete thinks he gave the guy the slip. He didn't, but he did find the mayor, and the creepy guy slips away.

Buzz flirts with a cute customer, and gives her a free yogurt. As she leaves, she finds the eyeball from earlier, and assumes that Buzz was pulling a prank. Only in a movie, would someone be this dumb. Wait a sec, someone did pull a stunt like this once, except that it involved a severed finger and some chili. So, even in reality, people are that dumb.

Melody starts up a jukebox, and it begins playing her "song". Then Pete arrives, and informs her that he may have a picture of her attacker. They talk about all of the strange things that have been happening to her, but neither can provide a logical answer to any of it. If they did, we could end this early...

Anyway, Mayor Karen and the head of mall security walk by the food court, and are discussing the mysterious attacker from the night before. The weird piano player overhears them, and decides to go on a coffee break. Oh, and Phantom Eric is watching. Maybe he's hoping for a piano rendition of his signature song.

The piano man(with apologies to Billy Joel...) enters an employees-only restroom, while Eric fiddles with the pipes nearby. It turns out that our meek musician is also Melody's would-be rapist! Crazy, huh? But yeah, he has the bloody shoulder wound to prove it.

He looks at his bloody shirt, sighs, then steps into a stall. When he sits on the toilet, a snake(maybe a cobra?) rears up between his legs, and gives the guy a fatal bite. What a classy way to die. I was kind of hoping that maybe, just maybe, he die in a toilet-geyser, or something like that.

Pete and Melody discuss how to discover the mystery stalker's identity, and sparks fly between them. There's nothing more romantic than a murderous lunatic watching your every move. The Phantom gets jealous, and smashes his mirror. Jealousy may be ugly, but Phantom Eric is uglier.

Harv's son returns to the mall, and spots Melody at work. He watches her for a little bit, then tries to pick her up. Eric sees the encounter and gets pissed, but Harv arrives to force his son off the premises.b As Justin(Harv's son...I decided to browse the Web until I could find his name) makes his way to the exit, he sees a skateboard, just sitting out in the open, waiting for someone to snatch it up. The Phantom moves through his dark passages, as Justin tries out some "rad" and "extreme" moves on his skateboard. I'm hip to the kids and their jive, man.

Eric stands at the top of an escalator, and whips a makeshift lasso around overhead, then loops it around Justin's neck. As the teen struggles to free himself, Phantom Eric gets the other end of the rope caught in the escalator belt, so that it pulls Justin upstairs to his doom. See? THIS is how the toilet murder should have gone down!

Justin tries to get some slack on the cord, but it won't give. His choking noises sound like the snarling rasps the victims made in Motel Hell...Boy, we've seen a shitload of these things together, huh? As Justin reaches the top, he coughs up some blood, then dies. Damn...was anybody else hoping for a decapitation? Oh well, it was still pretty nifty.

Melody and Pete talk some more about the investigation, as Eric drags Justin through his tunnels. Pete urges Melody to do everything she can to remember more details about the night of the fire, no matter how traumatizing the memories might be.

She remembers getting orchids, playing that insipid song, making out...then BOOM, Eric is suddenly a crispy critter. He helped her to escape through a window, even as he was burning, and then Melody fell to the ground, and got knocked out.

There is one extra detail, though: Before she passed out completely, Melody saw the arsonist standing in front of her. He planned to finish her off, but approaching sirens made the firebug skittish. Anyone smell burning steak? I think Eric is well done by now.

Pete suggests that Harv hired the arsonist. Then Melody suggests that maybe Eric survived the fire. Before they can plan a next step, the arsonist finds them and holds them hostage. In an awesome twist, the arsonist is played by the same actor who plays Mac's dad on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. It'd be funny if they turned out to be the same character!

Somehow, Pete manages to drive away, but the arsonist is in hot pursuit. The cars both speed through the mall's parking garage, and eventually Phantom Eric leaps onto the killer's car to help Pete and Melody get away. The crazy arsonist crashes his car, but also escapes as it burns up.

Pete and Melody dig up Eric's grave, and find it empty. They run to the mayor for help, while the arsonist reports his failed mission to Harv. Then Melody has another dream about knockin' boots with Eric, and he turns into Pete. Then Pete turns into the hired thug, and Melody wakes up. Is anyone else wondering if this thing will ever end? It seems like we've seen every scene 2-3 times now, with no resolution in sight.

Eric returns to the boiler room area, and it looks like he's setting up a bomb. Melody spots the thug, but he captures her before she can finish warning Pete. He drags her away, but Eric arrives to stop him. The 2 killers spar, and Eric nearly gets decapitated by a trash compactor door, but he finds a reserve of super-human strength, and forces the door back up again.

Eric then puts the other man in the same spot, but finishes the job. Oddly enough, it's the most bloodless kill so far. Eric realizes that Melody has escaped, and races off to locate her.

Buzz runs into Pete at the mall party, and rambles on about some "great idea", but Pete just wants to find Melody. Then Harv discovers the severed head of his hired goon, just after the security chief leaves. Don't you hate it when that happens?

Buzz finds Suzie, and drags her away to search for Melody. Then there are several shots of Eric's tunnels, and we finally see Melody, out cold, in his hideout. She wakes up as Eric's prisoner, and sees that he's been watching and recording her every move.

She hears the noise of his exercise equipment, and manages to find him by following the sound. The former lovers finally reunite, and Eric removes his mask, so that Melody can see the extent of the damage to his face. Eric vows to always protect her, and she touches his face. Awwww...

At the dinner Party, Pete asks around about Melody, but no one has seen her. Meanwhile Buzz and Suzie gain access to the security room, when Buzz distracts the guard by mooning him on a nearby camera. After all of the horrifying things I've seen in slasher films, this is the one that that I find the most disturbing.

When the guard leaves his post, they sneak in. Within minutes, they locate Melody's keys, and rush off to that particular hallway to pick up the trail. Yeesh, this is turning into Nancy Drew.

Eric tries to woo Melody, but she admits that she has feelings for Pete now. Eric runs away, probably to do something with his bomb. Meanwhile, Pete, Buzz, and Suzie are all closing in. Eric sets the bomb to explode in 30 minutes, Buzz and Suzie crawl around in the tunnels, unaware that Eric is now up there as well. Oh, and Pete spies rats feeding on a body, and decides to move faster.

Eric promises Melody that when the bomb goes off they can be together forever. Pete faces a snake on his way to rescue her, but he gets away unbitten. He finally finds the lair, and Melody watches her 2 boyfriends roll and and brawl. Melody stuns Eric by confessing that she loves Pete, and Pete uses the momentary distraction to knock him out.

They get back into the tunnels, but Eric wakes up. Buzz and Suzie reunite with Pete and Melody, and they work together to get back into the mall. Pete and Melody find and warn the mayor about the bomb, and she pulls out a gun....Huh?

Buzz and Suzie, in the meantime steal some kind of ATV, and go careening through the mall. As the mayor prepares to shoot her captives, Eric grabs her, and throws her through a window. Heh. Pete uses an intercom to evacuate the building, as Eric chases Melody up into the rafters.

The security chief shoots Eric several times, but he lands safely in front of Harv. He shows Harv his scarred visage, then kills the rich asshole with a blowtorch. Hey, maybe Harv survives, and ends up stalking Eric! Then we'd have Phantom of The Phantom of The Mall: Harv's Wrath!

Buzz and Suzie rescue Pete and Melody, and they speed out of the mall, just seconds before it blows to smithereens. The media goes nuts, and Melody and Pete celebrate being alive. In the wreckage, Eric looks dead, but his eye appears to open. THE END

Well....not unbearable, but not entirely successful either. Some of it was cheesy fun. The kills were varied enough, and Pauly Shore was mostly watchable for once, which was a surprise. 3.75 killer trees out of 5.

And what did Phantom of the Mall teach me about the slasher genre this time around?

-Even the Dos Equis guy had to start at the bottom.

-Pop music from the '80's sucked ass.

-If you survive a house fire, go live at the mall.

Next up is something called The Hunters. I'll post it when I can, but all of the hassle of this move is killing me. I'll post it soon, I promise.

Detenti...nope, The Nun!

Wow...been quite a while since the last SAW, huh? Sorry about that! I've been in the process of moving from one apartment to another, and everything "extracurricular" has had to be put on hold for a little bit. Also, the last movie I selected, Detention, turned out to be narrative-proof.

Seriously! Among the many random elements the movie had, it featured(in no particular order): a stuffed grizzly bear statue that was revived and abducted by aliens; a student who was slowly turning into a fly; a slasher flick within a slasher flick within ANOTHER slasher flick; a cheesy 1980's body-switching comedy; another student who was in detention for 19 years; and time travel. There's a shitload more, but it would take years to dissect every element of the film.

So...instead, I popped in a nice, simple, non-brain-tumor-causing movie called The Nun. It's slashery, it's simple, and it can be described. Thank the Gods! Oh, and it's time for some real SPOILERS...

Our movie begins with the credits alternating between a murky body of water, and some yellow pages from an old book. Then we meet our cast of victims, female students at a parochial school. There's Joanna, Zoe, Eulalia(I shit you not, that's her name), Susan, and Mary. As the film begins, the girls are all smoking together in a classroom(except for Eulalia, a disabled girl who is standing guard at the door), until their teacher, Sister Ursula, nearly catches them in the act.

She lectures the girls about their lack of discipline, then moves to front blackboard, and writes "SIN", in letters big enough to be seen on the surface of Mars. One of the girls tries to hide a love letter in one of her books, but Sister Ursula hears her, finds the romantic note, and rips it to shreds. Yeah! Take THAT, human emotions!

You'd think that would be the end of the incident...Nope! the enraged nun grabs the frightened girl by her neck, and lifts her out of her seat like the Nuninator. She then uses her Hulk-like rage to slam the girl into a wall, and growls at her in a demonic voice.

Alas, this highly entertaing chaotic scene is just a nightmare sequence. The girl, now an adult, sits straight up in her bed. Damn, I was loving the idea of a demon-possessed nun terrorizing high school girls.

Then we get jolted away to a  loud, obnoxious prom or formal school dance. There, we meet Julia, a short-haired brunette; Eve, an attractive blond; Joel, who is making a prom night video; Artie, a wide-eyed doofus-y guy...and a few more whose name I haven't caught yet.

Joel listens to his friends yammer on and on about a trip to Spain, then takes his camera in search of the ever-elusive girl that Artie wants but can't have. He sneaks up on her make-out session, then watches as a water pipe bursts, drenching the horny couple in toilet water. Fun.

Eve's mother turns out to be Mary, the sleeping woman in the previous scene. She's restless, and decides to rummage through some of her old stuff from high school. Scattered in the pile is a newspaper article about a woman in London, who apparently died in a fire. Hmmm...could this have been the work of a certain Nun?

Mary hears a noise, and assumes that Eve has come back from the dance. Finding the house empty, Mary steps into the bathroom, where the faucet is dripping. As she calls out to her daughter, she discovers that a plant has fallen off of a countertop, spilling water in the living room. Idon't think this movie has enough water in every scene.

She then enters the kitchen, where the sink is overflowing with water. As Mary tries to use a plunger in the sink and clean up the mess, the water in the sink begins to flow up toward the ceiling. Mary sees her daughter pull into the driveway, then Sister Ursula bursts out of the water to lunge at her. Eve walks into the house just in time to see The Nun slit her mother's throat, before crashing out of the nearest window.

The cops arrive, and Eve describes the apparition that killed her mom, even suggesting that it resembled a nun. The lead detective assumes that Eve was drinking at the dance, takes a statement from her friend Julia, and we learn that Eve doesn't know the identity of her father. Julia tells him that Mary probably  committed suicide, because she had previously tried to kill herself, back when Eve was only about 5 years old.

There's an extremely brief flashback showing Eve glancing through that book we saw in the credits, then the movie picks up the story again in Barcelona. We catch up with the adult version of Eulalia, who lives in Spain, She gets a call from Zoe, who fills her in on the current body count.

At her mother's grave, Eve is encouraged by Julia to go along with her friends to Spain. Then the adult version of Christy shows up at the graveyard. She warns Eve that there have been other deaths, and that she and Mary were supposed to attend a reunion of sorts, with their best friends from Catholic school. Christy then hands her a business card, and they part ways.

Eve finds the school memorabilia that her mother was poring over on the evening of her death, and decides to look through the pile. There, tucked away among the old pictures and papers, she finds a love letter, a possible clue to the identity of her father. The author of the short letter is somebody by the name of Miguel.

Christy wraps up a phone call with Eulalia, promising to see her in Barcelona. When she hangs up the phone, we see a small puddle of water starting to take form on the bed. Uh oh...guess who won't be going to Spain?

She steps into the bathroom, and gets splashed when her hotel room's toilet sprays water into her face. This movie has a toilet fetish...and it's not as much kinky fun as you might think! I may get more grossed out by these scenes, as opposed to the actual killings.

Christy calls the front desk, and we can see The Nun morphing out of more levitating water in the bathroom mirror's reflection. Pretty cool effect, actually. Of course, Christy doesn't see a thing...the characters never do.

She slips on her bathrobe, and decides to leave the hotel room. Once she's in the hallway, she actually sees The Nun floating down a corridor, and gets understandably upset. She backs away until she gets to the elevator, and hurries inside.

While this is happening, Eve arrives in the hotel lobby. The elevator starts to fill up with water, and now Christy is really scared. The elevator stops between floors, and as Christy tries to pull herself up to the floor level, the door chops her arms off! Pretty nifty effects, too. The elevator then opens up at the lobby, where Eve gets a bird's-eye view of the stumpy corpse. As a really nutty way to end the scene, the elevator door closes again, which probably means that some random hotel guest is about to get a really memorable souvenir of their visit! 2 guests, actually...after all, we can't forget and the arms!

On the plane to Spain, there is mainly rain. Eve sees The Nun outside the tiny window, but it's another nightmare scene. Oh, and during the flight, there is a massive storm going on. Oddly enough, Spain appears to be the sunniest place in the world, when the plane finally lands. I guess the rain over Spain mainly hit the plane.

Eve decides to begin her investigation into The Nun right away, getting a ton of reference material from, in another ironic twist, a nun. Eve looks up her mother's old classmates in an old yearbook, and begins to match the old pictures with more current ones, as well as numerous articles about their deaths.

As Eve decides to make photocopies of some of the articles, a young man named Gabriel offers to translate them for her. He happens to also be studying to join the priesthood, so the information about the school(which has since been closed), is right up his alley.

Gabriel meets Eve and her friends a local nightclub, where he provides her with the translations that he promised. Her friends discover that Gabe is joining the priesthood, and crack jokes about it until he leaves. Oh, and the nightclub is filled with tanks of water, so expect a massive slaughter soon...

Eve catches up with Gabriel, and he confesses that he's joining the priesthood because of a traumatic driving accident. Meanwhile, Eulalia is feeding her dog, clipping her toenails, and drawing herself a bath. Of course, the water goes haywire, but eventually Eulalia gets it under control-ish. It feels like the camera crew just filmed everything that ever happened, then left the compelling footage on the floor of the cutting room.

She finds her dog dead, though. Except that it's just messing around with her head, gets up, and strolls away... Eulalia limps back into the bathroom, and finds the faucet in the tub running again. She switches it off yet again, and sits wearily on the bathroom floor, completely oblivious to the fact that The Nun has popped out of the tub behind her.

Seriously, The Nun just stays the like that, waiting patiently for Eulalia to turn around and see her. I kinda wished that she had said "Boo!" and made a silly face to cap it off. This movie is the best kind of "WTF?" there is. It's like The Blair With is pulling a move out of The Matrix. How long can she stay stuck like that?

Eve, of course, decides to visit Eulalia at that very moment, just because. She finds the disabled woman's corpse, crucified. She and Gabriel rush out of there as fast as they can. In the car, Gabriel, Eve and her friends Joel and Julia debate whether or not to tell the police what they know, and whether or not to warn the few survivors who are left. Then they run the car off the road to avoid a crash, and the car won't restart.

They walk home in the rain(!!!), only to panic when they can't find Susan or Zoe. There's a power outage, so they briefly switch on the video camera for night vision...and we get a cheap scare involving a flock of birds. Those mutha-flockin' birds, on that mutha-flockin' plane, man.

Eve finds Susan and Zoe wandering around, and she tries to warn them about The Nun. The adult pair then confess that The Nun can't be the killer...because they and their friends killed her back when they were students at the school. In a flashback, we see all of the girls doing something wild and crazy: drinking milk in the school's kitchen late at night. Those wacky rebels. They soon realize that Mary is missing from the group, and then they hear noises in the distance.

They find Mary being attacked by The Nun, and force her off of the frightened girl. In the scuffle, The Nun slips, hits her head, and falls into a tub full of water. The teenagers are stunned, then even more shocked when she opens her eyes. As The Nun attempts to sit up again, the girls decide, as a group, to drown her once and for all.

They take the body outside, and make it look like she slipped on a bridge and drowned in a local pond or lake. Then the flashback ends, and they wonder what their next move should be. One character even describes the predicament as I Know What You Did 18 Summers Ago. Heh. They wish.

Eve and Gabriel decide to poke around in the living quarters that The Nun and the students used to occupy. Eve tells him that part of her past is a mystery, because she has repressed memories. Meanwhile, Joel and Julia work on getting the power restored.

Gabriel and Eve decide to explore each other instead of the bedrooms. Nice way to prioritize, you dumbasses! Luckily, the lights come back on, and they decide to stop goofing around. Oh, and Susan and Zoe just stand around chatting. "So...what have you been up to since we murdered a nun as teenagers?"

Gabriel decides to leave Eve alone in the bedroom, and she sees water in the bed. Then a shape forms, and Eve has her lost memory restored. Gabriel returns, and he calms her down. Everyone else then joins them, and the pair reveal that they have discovered paintings depicting saints. Each of the murder victims was named after a saint, and the murders were all recreations of how each saint died.

Zoe then pulls a "Jennifer Love Hewitt", taunting the ghostly killer to finish what she started. She takes off down the hallway, and the others rush after her. Man, this thing is getting kookier by the second! Susan is left alone with Eve, and tells the teen that she and her friends are somehow responsible for The Nun coming back. She locks herself in a section of the old building to distance herself from the rest of the group, then freaks out as she realizes how utterly stupid that idea was. Susan Einstein, Resident Genius.

Susan's "alone time" doesn't last very long. As she races around the room, potential exits mysteriously begin to shut and lock on her. Meanwhile, the others catch up to Zoe, who is testing out random objects as potential weapons. Then she and the other couple finally realize that they abandoned Susan and Eve. Oops!

And speaking of Susan...the floor around her is suddenly getting very watery. She tries to use the Power of Prayer, but The Nun lunges at her, and passes through her body, Thinking that the prayer kept her safe, Susan doesn't realize that the spirit is behind her. The Nun grabs Susan, pushes her forward, and breaks a glass door, decapitating her victim in the process.

Then here's another flashback, showing The Nun abusing Mary with a shower head. Then, back to the plot. The surviors decide to shut off the water supply, and keep the pipes empty. An accident with one of the pipes reveals Gabriel to Joel. He looks like he was impaled on a pipe.

The water starts to flow again, and The Nun attacks Zoe. Then Eve devise the dumbest plan eve heard in he history of planning...Eve is going to explore, while Julia sits underwate, trying to lure The Nun into killing her. These folks are dead from the neck up.

Joel finds Julia and rescues her, then tells her that the killer is actually Eve. She seems to believe that The Nun is inside her, because she learned when she was a little girl that her mother had killed The Nun. In flashbacks, we see the murders, with Eve present at every scene somehow. Yeah, so this teenager went to London, New York, Barcelona, and wherever else, and managed to kill around 10 people without anyone ever getting suspicious. And believe  it or not, that's where the movie just grinds to a halt. THE END...Oh, and Eve ends up killing herself. Yay.

Geez, this one had a great concept and killer, but a terrible plot. And way, waaaaaay too many characters to keep track of as well. The Nun should have had more scenes, and not been a figment in a person's head. A near miss. 2 out of 5.

And what did I learn from The Nun?

-Ghost nuns look damn creepy!

-Guys training to become priests still want to "get some".

-Teens with mental disorders can teleport whenever the need arises.

Next movie on my queue is Phantom of the Mall, which sounds pretty odd. Cross your fingers!