The Horror Show
Sin Reaper 3D
by Sebastian Bartolitius
I haven’t had much luck with Fangoria’s line of movies, entitled Fangoria Presents. I have attempted to watch Entity several times on Hulu and have not managed to stay awake once. However, I am quite fond of their cover art and it’s lulled me into a false sense of security. Also, Netflix doesn’t have the Fangoria Presents headliner on the art like Hulu does. So, I was basically tricked into watching Sin Reaper, cover art was the sole reason I chose to watch this movie. I should stop making decisions based on that.
All right, I had an incredibly difficult time following this movie, so please bear with this summary. Samantha Walker is a young woman who is haunted by dreams of a nun being murdered in a monastery by a boy wearing a sack over his head. Why is she having these dreams, you may ask? Because, plot device, dear reader. The dreams have been a source of stress in her life and she wants to find the cause. Based on her drawings, Sam’s therapist finds that the monastery is called Wallenhausen, located in Germany. To make peace with her dreams she travels there and meets Sasha, a potential love interest willing to aid her any way he can. They find that Wallenhausen is now a museum run by corrupt men attempting insurance fraud by stealing their own artifacts. Sasha’s friends, untrusting of Samantha, pursue the two and try to convince their friend to return before getting in trouble. However, the Sin Reaper, a famed 12th century figure wielding a bladed mace and donning a crusader helm, starts picking people off in order to eradicate all sinful behavior. His attacks may not be as random as everyone thinks though.
The Sin Reaper wears one badass costume but that’s pretty much all he has going for him. He doesn’t have a cool or tragic origin story; it’s honestly pretty lame. I kind of want to blurt it out here but I’m going to hold back for a bit. None of his kills were awesome either; he killed every single person with his mace. That’s not the problem but they were all straightforward, smacked with a mace and dead. I would have loved to see someone hit in the face with a mace and rip his or her entire face off in the process. Maybe the kills seemed boring because Sin Reaper was intended to be in a 3d format. However, the Netflix version is not in 3d. 3d can be a great addition to some movies, just as an enhancer. Shots that have the sole intent of being viewed in 3d are tacky because home viewers don’t have the luxury of watching the movie in 3d. I could just sit and point out every single shot that’s supposed to be seen in 3d and I hate that. If I’m thinking, “That would look cool in 3d,” that’s a problem because I can never truly appreciate it.
Another issue that bothered me immensely was the horrible acting. Normally, I don’t mind English accents because I can’t tell if the acting is bad or not. I can tell if an English actor is doing a bad job if I can hear their accent and they are playing American characters. At first, I couldn’t tell if Helen Mutch had an English accent slipping into her acting or not, I thought maybe she was just a bad actor from the US. I looked up Helen Mutch’s IMDB profile and as it turns out she is English! So I’m not crazy after all. The rest of the film is filled with actors who over act, or are unable to behave like a normal human being when a camera is pointed at them.
Spoilers.Let’s just get that over with already. Seriously, I had no idea what happened this entire movie. First off, they never explain why Sam has her dreams. That’s kind of the whole reason the movie happens and they can’t do the audience a favor by explaining it. Then, Sam’s birth mother was pregnant with twins and their father was a priest who had serious regrets about the pregnancy because of his involvement in the church. The mother gives birth to both, she keeps the boy, David, and puts Sam up for adoption. She said that the father could never know about Sam; why, you make ask? Because, reasons.
Really. The movie never explains why she had to give away Sam. Their father didn’t seem like a crazy or unreasonable guy. Sure, David growing up in the monastery wasn’t the best idea because clearly he was crazy but who’s to say Sam would have suffered the same fate? In fact, they didn’t have the clairvoyance to know that David would become a murderer. So, what was the big deal? Then, the mother who raised Samantha gave her the birth mother’s necklace but never tells Sam she’s adopted. The therapist theorizes it was to protect her, then again to protect Sam from what? I was honestly thrown off because Samantha stated she wasn’t adopted earlier in the movie; it’s so matter-of-factly that you don’t even think to question it. When it was revealed that her birth mother was a nun, I was confused because Samantha stated before that she wasn’t adopted. I actually thought to myself, “How can this woman be Sam’s mother? Sam said she wasn’t adopted,” not realizing the mother who raised Sam lied to her. I had to watch it a second time to understand that. They also introduce little subplots like Sasha’s friends hating Sam for no reason, other than the fact that the movie needed conflict. All these little plots in the middle of this huge convoluted plot make everything much harder to keep track of, especially when I’m already having a hard time following everything.
I wish I could say I liked something about this movie other than the Sin Reaper costume but I really can’t. I’m actually straining here trying to think of a single redeemable part of this movie and I just can’t. Oh, like I said before the cover was cool. So my proposal is this: Fangoria should stick to crappy photographs and graphic design for the movie cover art. An illustrated cover stands out and is really cool. I see it and I’m like, “This movie has an illustrated cover! It must be awesome!” That’s not the case. It’s misleading, I’m sure that was their goal. I just don’t want to waste more time on movies I’m going to hate for stupid reasons.
Billy Wayne Martin, HMS
The Horror Show Menu.