The Banshee Chapter plays like a group of lesser film school students put forward their best effort. This is to say one must park most expectations at the door not to worry about a bit of cheese here and some embarrassing moments pushing something that clearly overreaches any credibility which it certainly would benefit from.
As the film opens there is a montage of interviews with people involved with the real, and absolutely harrowing MK-Ultra experiments. These totally serious newsreels about something definitely factual built up expectations that this movie would quite simply betray. This was a miscue right off the bat and hurts the fictional film that follows as something much closer to real and less (ridiculously silly) paranormal was expected.
There was a silly segment about random electronic numbers just coming in like a radio transmission from a radio station in the ether. Some writer chick is on this stuff because a friend took some of the still available drug concoction from the MK-Ultra crap and died, or went up in smoke or something (I don't know or care). The last straw was at 22-minutes when the writers tried to introduce a character based on Hunter S. Thompson. You can't make silly stuff seem like it has a shred of credibility by bringing a character totally plagiarized. Maybe for some this is watchable, sadly for me is is so bad it isn't even laughable. The estate of Thompson should be contemplating their options as it sullies an image Hunter cultivated to be a certain kind of respectable in all of his anti-establishment glory (i.e. his brand of freedom versus everything).Over and out at 25-minutes. I give it 3 because the story is 0, but the effort deserves at least 2 or 3 and the actors do a respectable job with absolutely terrible characters.
As the film opens there is a montage of interviews with people involved with the real, and absolutely harrowing MK-Ultra experiments. These totally serious newsreels about something definitely factual built up expectations that this movie would quite simply betray. This was a miscue right off the bat and hurts the fictional film that follows as something much closer to real and less (ridiculously silly) paranormal was expected.
There was a silly segment about random electronic numbers just coming in like a radio transmission from a radio station in the ether. Some writer chick is on this stuff because a friend took some of the still available drug concoction from the MK-Ultra crap and died, or went up in smoke or something (I don't know or care). The last straw was at 22-minutes when the writers tried to introduce a character based on Hunter S. Thompson. You can't make silly stuff seem like it has a shred of credibility by bringing a character totally plagiarized. Maybe for some this is watchable, sadly for me is is so bad it isn't even laughable. The estate of Thompson should be contemplating their options as it sullies an image Hunter cultivated to be a certain kind of respectable in all of his anti-establishment glory (i.e. his brand of freedom versus everything).Over and out at 25-minutes. I give it 3 because the story is 0, but the effort deserves at least 2 or 3 and the actors do a respectable job with absolutely terrible characters.