RAW REVIEW: THE CURSE OF LILITH RATCHET

Eddie Lengyel’s Scarred, that I reviewed here back in November 2015, was a cool throwback slasher movie that very much suggested Lengyel is a horror director to watch.

And now he’s back, but this time he takes on more crowd-pleasing mainstream fright flicks like the Conjuring or Insidious movies with American Poltergeist: The Curse Of Lilith Ratchet.

Scarred proved a strong effort, but would his creepy ghost story deliver the frights as well?

Read on...

AMERICAN POLTERGEIST: THE CURSE OF LILITH RATCHET (2018)











Dir: Eddie Lengyel
Stars: KateLynn E Newberry, Rob Jaeger, Roger Conners, Angela Cole, Brianna Burke, George Tutie, Crissy Kolarik, Debbie Scaletta

SPEEDY SYNOPSIS: I’ll try not to spoil too much here but continue at your own risk.

Friends Alice (Newberry), Lauren (Burke) and Dylan (Conners) make a bizarre discovery in a small antique store - a shrunken head said to belong to a local legend, the witch Lilith Ratchet.

Upon presenting their find to supernatural podcast host Hunter Perry (Jaeger) they learn that playing an ancient game with the head (think hot potato but with the severed body part) runs the risk of awakening the ancient spirit.

Of course, Hunter - looking to give his show a ratings boost - gathers a group of fans to a special party to play the game. One by one they are eliminated until a winner is crowned.

But the game doesn’t end there - and as the losing players fall one-by-one the group enters a terrifying race against time to break the curse - before Lilith breaks them.




THE BEST BITS (mild spoiler warning): The biggest trend in crowd-pleasing horror right now is the spooky supernatural story. Almost a backlash to the torture porn craze of a few years ago, now blood has been replaced by chills, and the visceral reaction of these movies is caused by the jump scare rather than lashings of gore. The likes of Insidious and Sinister have proven to be real heavy-hitters while The Conjuring franchise has become one of the most profitable in the genre with The Curse Of La Llorona, the sixth entry, currently in cinemas.

What American Poltergeist: The Curse Of Lilith Ratchet proves is that it’s not only James Wan helmed big studio efforts that can make this format work.

Director Lengyel emerged as a great filmmaker with Scarred. With this movie he proves that was no fluke. He has crafted a fun and spooky flick that almost acts as a greatest hits of the ‘Blumhouse’-style genre movie, all while bringing plenty of new touches to the table as it does so.

The story is simple, not overly complex, but brings a couple of unique hooks to make it feel fresh. The game element of the storyline is very cool, while the flashbacks detailing the macabre story behind arch-villainess Lilith are also great fun.

That Lengyel frames each shot so well as to really evoke a suitably uneasy feeling also helps to elevate the ghoulish subject matter.

It helps that he has such a strong cast at his disposal. Newberry does a fine job as the leading lady, ensuring the viewer always feels sympathetic toward her plight.

Burke is a real revelation as Lauren and this promising young actress is one I shall be looking out for in the future.

It’s not just the ladies who impress, Jaeger delivers arguably the stand-out performance as Hunter- bringing the sleazy character to life without ever descending into caricature. His character also takes quite the journey and it’s fascinating watching him.

Conners (who I spoke highly of before in my review for Chill: The Killing Games) is also quite excellent. I enjoyed his work before, and it was a pleasure to see him once again.

Last but not least, Crissy Kolarik is brilliant as the titular phantom. The role is primarily silent, a wordless performance built on sheer theatrical physicality. Kolarik does not just understand this, she revels in it. A good horror villain can elevate a genre flick - and this is a very good horror villain indeed.

The character design is a huge part of what makes the character work - she looks not unlike Insidious’s infamous Bride in Black crossed with the criminally underrated Dead Silence’s Mary Shaw with a hint of the divisive Stay Alive’s Elizabeth Bathory all topped off with The Woman In Black. Think spooky pale-faced Victorian school ma’ams and you get the idea. It’s a recurring motif in horror for good reason - it works!

Credit has to go to make-up artist Daniel Blain Click and special effects guru William M. Johns for bringing the look to life so effectively.

And Johns delivers in other areas too. We get some decidedly grisly wounds and bloody kills along the way to the unexpected conclusion of Lengyel’s tale. That Lengyel can take so many familiar ingredients but still deliver some surprises along the way speaks volumes about his skills.




THE WORST BITS (mild spoiler warning): As I wrote earlier, Blumhouse’s character-driven ghost/demon stories are very much in vogue when it comes to the horror genre. It is good to see a smaller indie tackle these subjects - however, it is worth remembering that The Curse Of Lilith Ratchet is doing so on a significantly lower budget than your average Blumhouse national release.

It isn’t that Lengyel’s movie is shoddy - far from it - but of course it isn’t quite as polished as a lot of those big studio flicks. As such it is worth adjusting your expectations accordingly.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in a few scenes in which perhaps the time and budget to construct tailored sets would have worked to counter the limitations of the locations used.

I think it’s safe to say the hiding place chosen during the opening kill isn’t the strongest, while a key stand-off during the climactic game of cat and mouse in the night club where the game began also feels a little hampered.

I know it’s not really fair to pick at these things, caused by financial and time constraints rather than any deficiency of skill, but they are moments that can pull some people out of the moment.

These same constraints mean that not every performance hits the highs of the best moments during the movie. It’s not due to any lack of effort on the part of the actors, but every now and then the odd line does fall a little flat. Thankfully this is something that only occurs rarely, and does not significantly hinder enjoyment of the movie.

Finally, the pacing of the movie can get a little erratic at times. There are a couple of longer scenes that could probably have been excised or at least trimmed significantly to help the flow of the story. The movie does clock in at a little over 100min - it could afford to lose a minute (or five).




THE VERDICT: It is so refreshing to see a skilfully told jump-scare genre flick coming from the indies rather than a massive studio. It is even better to see that it is genuinely fun!

Lengyel has delivered the goods once again - sure, it’s a little rough around the edges at times, but at its core, The Curse Of Lilith Ratchet is pure entertainment. It features a neat hook with its game plotline, and an extremely cool villain. Under the writer/director’s assured guidance, and buoyed by some sterling performances and effects work, this is a sure-fire hit.

It’s not often I get to the end of an indie horror flick and instantly look forward to a sequel - rest assured, that if Lengyel and his crew want to return to this story, I am ready for Ratchet!

American Poltergeist: The Curse Of Lilith Ratchet is available at Walmart and Amazon.com - UK readers, stay tuned for an official release date. In the meantime, why not check out the film’s official Facebook page here? Give it a like while you’re there too, these guys deserve it!

If you haven’t already, do please check out and Like the Hickey’s House of Horrors Facebook page, which you can find here. It gives you a nice quick link to any new posts on this blog, plus regular news updates from around the web. I check the Internet so you don’t have to! Alternatively, follow me on twitter: The House @HickeysHorrors

Until next time, I hope you enjoyed your stay.

RAW REVIEW: SCARRED AKA KANDIE LAND

Slasher flicks.
We love them, don't we?
One of the coolest things to happen to our beloved genre in recent years is the resurgence of the throwback slasher movie. Seemingly emerging as a direct backlash to the teen-friendly, big budget, glossy Blumhouse-style horror movies of recent years, there's been a real wave of old-school slashers, such as Chill: The Killing Games; Muck; The Pickaxe Murders Part III; Headless; Axe To Grind; Berkshire County AKA Tormented and Dorchester's Revenge AKA Dollface, to name just a few of the titles that I've come across here at the House over the last year.
The latest subgenre entry to bring blood and mayhem back to the woods is Eddie Lengyel's Scarred (previously known as Kandie Land).
I've seen reviews praising the movie's hulking killer, pretty young victims and lashings of innovative gore, so I was delighted when the guys behind the film very kindly got in touch asking if I'd care to review it.
Would this one make a mark? Or would I think it was an unsightly blemish on the genre?
Read on…

SCARRED A.K.A KANDIE LAND (2013)

Dir: Eddie Lengyel
Starring: Ari Lehman, Don Kilrain, Lisa Neeld, Carl Ferrara, Tina Grimm, Alex Russo, Molly Miller, Jessica Lauschin, Max Elinsky, Janine Sarnowski, Haley Kocinski, Devin Steiner, Justine Greenwald, Mark Cray, Robbie Barnes, Bart Flynn

SPEEDY SYNOPSIS:  I'll try not to spoil too much here but continue at your own risk.

The movie opens with a young lady pulling into a local bar and talking to the patrons about her missing sister. After she leaves, one of the gruff men (Cray) takes one of the girl's fliers home to his wife Luna (Sarnowski) and daughter Tiny (Miller). Tiny mentions that she has seen the girl on the flyer playing with 'Jonah', a statement that her disbelieving parents dismiss.
However, the audience is then introduced to the hulking, masked Jonah (Kilrain), who promptly slaughters the missing girl in his murky den.
Next we meet Jonah's next batch of victims, a group of models — Brooke (Grimm), Asia (Russo), Jess (Lauschin) and Marley (Kocinski). The head of their agency Miss Ambler (Greenwald) declares Marley the 'new face of her company', then agrees to send the girls on a nature-themed photoshoot at an isolated rural location for a wealthy business partner — whose son, Brody (Elinsky), will photograph the girls.

Rounding out the group is Ambler's lovable nephew Bo (Ferrara), who will act as minder for the models and intends to use this opportunity to convince the girls to star in his upcoming horror movie.
Soon the crew are on their way and on route they meet a local couple Shaina (Playboy Playmate Neeld) and Austin (original Jason Voorhees, Lehman) who try to warn them about the dark history of their destination — notably that it once belonged to the Kandie family, whose strange son Jonah's face was cruelly mutilated by his violent father for unspecified sins. The group laugh this off as a silly campfire ghost story.
However, when they reach the campsite (run by Luna), it soon becomes clear that the long-presumed dead Jonah has unfinished business — and he may not be acting alone.
What exactly does Jonah want? Will any of the models escape his clutches... or even survive?

THE BEST BITS (mild spoiler warning): The folks behind Scarred are a canny bunch — rather than attempt to reinvent the wheel, they stick to giving the audience what it wants. This is an unapologetic, old-fashioned Eighties-style slasher flick. It boasts some decent scares, some good-looking young people all lining up in a remote location to join a sizeable bodycount and plenty of gruesome, grisly and inventive manners in which to off them. This isn't the most original of stories, nor is it likely to shake horror to its core — but what it is extremely good at doing is entertaining all you gorehounds that were raised on the likes of Madman, The Burning, Funhouse and all the other lurid-cased slashers that enticed us from the shelves of our local video store.

That's not to say that the plot is a dud — no, writer/director Lengyel manages to give us a couple of nice twists and turns, plus a compelling back story to hold our attention. What's more he juggles a large cast of characters without losing any of them in the shuffle, making sure that each stands out for all the right reasons. Furthermore, we don't get too many stereotypes among them. It would have been all too easy to make one of the models 'the bitchy' girl and one 'the sweet girl', but instead they have more nuance than that.

As a horror director, Lengyel also clearly knows his stuff, keeping the movie zipping along at a brisk pace and getting the very most out of the extremely modest $10,000 budget. Each shot is competently and professionally framed, each scene looks far better than it probably has any right to. This is due in no small part to the great cinematography by Noelle Bye who gives the film that last little bit of finesse. 

The cast are mostly pretty good, with all of the main characters hitting their mark. I especially enjoyed the work of the charismatic Greenwald and Lauschin, the stunning Kocinski (who shows enough here to suggest she could make for a super scream queen, should she choose to stick with the genre) and the very funny Ferrara who uses his superb comic timing to great effect in a couple of key scenes. It was also brilliant to see Ari Lehman, the original Jason Voorhees, in a nice supporting role. He's a very cool and talented guy, so it's always a pleasure to see him on the screen here at The House.

Elsewhere, the work of Cray is also worthy of mention — he plays a horrible character and quickly succeeds in getting the audience to hate him. That's a sign of a talented actor, so more props to him!
His sympathetic wife is brought to life by the wonderful Sarnowski. I thought she was great in Chill and she's even better here.

I also loved Miller's Tiny. The diminutive actress shows big talent in her role, making Tiny enigmatic at times, occasionally sympathetic, often extremely creepy but always utterly fascinating to watch. She's excellent and, should there be a sequel, I really do hope she'll be back for it.

The extremely imposing Kilrain (he stands at 6ft 5 and weighs 250lbs) is also excellent as the silent villain Jonah Kandie. He uses subtle body language to imbue his character with even more menace, veering from slowly stalking his victims and methodically mutilating them to frenziedly attacking. The character has a cool backstory and his MO of hating anything beautiful following his own disfigurement gives him a compelling (and decidedly disturbing) motive to target and mutilate the models.

And does he ever go to work on his victims! At times it borders on Hostel-style torture p0rn, as each of the murders are horrifying, sadistic and make full use of the spectacular effects work. With ripped, slashed, burnt and gouged flesh, plus geysers of blood, the effects team of Greg Lanning, Daniel Blain Click and Raven Lunitic go above and beyond the call of duty here. Kudos!

You can tell that this movie was a labour of love for the effects team, just as it was for so many other people involved in the production. To me, that is one of the film's biggest strengths. The people involved in creating Scarred really care. From the hardcore promotion that Lengyel is doing, actively seeking out reviewers to help bring this film to the masses, to taking the time and effort to engage with the fans during post-screening Q&As, it's so heartening to see filmmakers that feel so enthusiastic and passionate about a project. The cast and crew are obviously horror aficionados and in Scarred they have produced a movie for their fellow genre fans. For this reason I really do wish them and the project all the success they deserve. 

THE WORST BITS (mild spoiler warning): Like I said before, Scarred is a simple throwback slasher film, made from the template of the hundreds of 'maniac in a summercamp' movies that have come before it. What this means is that it inherits the flaws inherent in all of those films.
As slashers go, it's pretty damn great, but if you aren't a fan of the sub-genre I very much doubt that there's anything here that is going to change your mind. The plot is simplistic, and yes, Lengyel does give us a couple of interesting twists along the way, but it very much follows the usual format. It's pretty linear and serves mainly to link the considerably gory set pieces together.
This is a slasher movie — don't go in expecting The English Patient.
Bizarrely, it's both very simple AND leaves some key points unexplained. I'm hoping that this is just the first outing for Jonah Kandie and some of those extra details will be more fully fleshed out in subsequent outings.
Also, while I praised the commitment and dedication of the cast earlier, there are a couple of moments when inexperience does shine through. There are a few clunky line deliveries and some rather awkward facial expressions from a couple of cast members. Long-term horror fans will be all too familiar with game, if not the most polished actors appearing in slasher flicks — and that's exactly what we get here. Thankfully most of the major parts are played well and the less accomplished moments don't serve as a serious hindrance to enjoying the film.
Also, while the filmmakers have done a marvellous job with such a small budget, it is worth pointing out that to those of you used to larger-budget, shiny, big studio horror flicks, this will definitely appear a little rough around the edges. Unfortunately there are a few points at which some audio issues arise. However, I think it's a testament to the skill of Lengyel and his crew that these issues are so rare.



THE VERDICT: Scarred is a mean, nasty slasher flick and I had a real blast with it! With some viciously imaginative kills, a memorable villain and plenty of heart from everybody involved, this is a throwback slasher done right. I really hope that the folks at Fright Teck Pictures return to Kandie Land to give us even more of Jonah's murderous misadventures. I for one, shall be first in line if they do.

If you want to watch Scarred, you can buy the film (plus plenty of cool merch including a killer t-shirt!) direct from the makers here. For more information, check out the film's official Facebook page. Give it a LIke while you're there too, these guys deserve your support!

If you haven’t already, do please check out and like the Hickey’s House of Horrors Facebook page, which you can find here. It gives you a nice quick link to any new posts on this blog, plus regular news updates from around the web. I check the Internet so you don’t have to! Alternatively, follow me on twitter: The House@HickeysHorrors

Until next time, I hope you enjoyed your stay.