You’d
think a perfectly good prison would be the last thing the city of Philadelphia
would leave sitting around unused. It is not like they don’t have a need for
it, but Holmesburg Prison’s checkered past (riots, biological testing) just
made its continued operation problematically controversial. It is still there.
Given what went down, it sounds like the perfect place for an aspiring reality
TV creep to film a spec ghost-hunting encounter, but it is the absolutely last
place drunk college students should be horsing around. Strange, unexplained
things will go on behind Holmesburg’s bars in Brian Cavallaro’s Against the Night (trailer here), which opens today
in Los Angeles.
Obviously,
the night turned out badly, because the movie starts with the sole survivor
telling her story to Philly’s least intuitive flatfoot. (I don’t remember which
one she was, but does it really matter?) In any event, the gratingly obnoxious
Sean convinces his pals to let him film them stumbling around Holmesburg looking
for ghosts. Of course, the jerkweed pre-planned a lot of mean tricks to play
with their heads. It also leaves them in a heightened disadvantage when
whatever haunts those halls starts picking them off one by one.
At
first, the unknown agency is supernatural. Than its human, but Cavallaro
inevitably starts dropping hints it is uncanny after all. This time around, the
is-it-or-isn’t-it tango just tries our patience. However, what Against has going for it, it has in
spades: a massively sinister real-life location and some hugely creepy set
dressing. Holmesburg might just be the creepiest movie setting ever, perhaps
even more than Grave Encounters’
Collingwood Psychiatric Hospital (a.k.a. Riverview Hospital in BC). However,
the Vicious Brothers displayed a far greater command of horror movie mechanics
and a masterful control of the eerie vibe. Instead of being scared by Against, we just scope out spooky
trappings while we wait for it to catch up with the wrap-around segments.
