Nobody
expects the Spanish Inquisition, especially not last year in Peru. Of course,
surprise was one of its chief weapons. A group of Peruvian college students are
about to be deeply shocked by the Inquisition and a vengeful spirit still
holding what you might call a grudge. Found footage gets the Latin American
Catholic treatment in Eduardo Schuldt’s Entity (trailer here), which releases today on DVD
from Omnibus Entertainment.
Why do
college professors keep assigning documentaries as their final class projects?
Inevitably, somebody decides to lock themselves in the old spooky house where a
serial killer used to live, awakening the evil that lurks within. In this case,
Carla’s initial proposal starts out more observational and less participatory.
She proposes a film about online reaction videos: posted footage of everyday
people responding to disturbing imagery. Not surprisingly, her mostly
ex-boyfriend Joshua and his buds, the aggressively annoying Benjamin and the
nebbish Lucas, readily agree.
At
first, it is just about the people watching. However, when all the documented
viewers of a particularly unsettling reaction video turn out to be recently
deceased, the fab four decide they should track down the video they were so
upset by. With the help of the elder brother of the fellow Carla just happened
to know from summer break, the kids follow their trail to one of the spookiest
looking cemeteries you will ever see. Technically, they find the seriously evil
Macguffin in the adjoining church’s archive. That would be what looks like Super
8 film of a Spanish Inquisitor’s torture session, circa early 1500, which most
likely has something to do with the malevolent forcing stalking Joshua and his
friends.
The
whole found footage thing has gone well past the point of been-there-done-that,
but the massively creepy, baroquely sinister mausoleums of the Cementerio Museo
Presbítero Matías Maestro take the film to a
much higher level. Frankly, if you cannot scare viewers there, you have no hope
of making it in this genre.
Schuldt
makes those gimme putts and also wrings a lot of chills out of the university’s
not so well lit library. His locations are eerily effective, but the cast is
just so-so. They are all largely playing stock characters, but at least
Daniella Mendoza gets to do some memorable stuff down the stretch as Carla.
Together, the kids bicker relentlessly, but it is never remotely as sharply
written as They’re Watching.
