Friday, October 16, 2015

The Cradle Of Shadows



A crew of French paranormal investigators investigates a vague haunting and walks slowly down the partially lit hallways of a sort-of abandoned bunker while carrying flashlights in this sort-of horror film. Featuring handheld nausea cam, the explorers come to a bunker where a worker has disappeared, and using their ghost-hunting equipment, find a bra. After walking around the labyrinthine bunker with their flashlights, they discover someone has destroyed their equipment. It's not very interesting. One of the team-members searches a flooded tunnel and decides to go for a swim. I'm not sure why. Finally, the crew sees an apparition at the 38-minute mark. Unfortunately, we the viewers don't get to see it, because the film-makers resort to the cliched cheat of going back to the handheld nausea cam to avoid showing us what the crew saw, which means that the camera shakes violently so the viewer can't see it's just a woman in a lacy dress with a long black wig. It's pretty derivative of Samara in Ringu, and it isn't very interesting. The crew discovers a Nazi laboratory, and the way everyone can tell it's a Nazi laboratory is because of the Adolf Hitler poster that's hung on the wall. The team realizes that the Nazis created mutants in the bunkers, and then something important happens because the handheld nausea cam shakes violently. What happened? I'm not sure. More footage of the cast walking down tunnels carrying flashlights happens for the rest of the movie, the camera shakes a lot, and the film enigmatically ends. There's a brief shot of dangling entrails, but it's nothing to write home about, and I'm not sure why anyone would write home about entrails. Featuring unconvincing acting, an incoherent script that can't decide if it's a story about a ghost or monsters, terrible cinematography, a generic nu-metal score, and a complete lack of scares or cradles,  The Cradle Of Shadows bores and confuses. Avoid it as if you're being chased by mutants.


No comments:

Post a Comment