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Best movie of this year hands down!

Simply Perfect

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

1) Get a million dollars 2) Assemble a cast and crew 3) Rewrite a script. Repeat. Repeat again 4) Procure some film/video and lighting equipment 5) Locate a current/old or abandoned asylum 6) Make movie 7) Read reviews on IMDb 8) Try againThis movie would have worked much better if the video makers went deep into XXX territory. One reviewer suggested a spoof. Hmmmm. Maybe. Anyone agree? Makes more sense that way. And there were hints of spoofdom...but spoofs are hard to pull off. The Naked Gun series and Scary Movie series were very funny movies.But then they had lots of talent too.NIGHT: INSIDE ASYLUMThe Director is watching a "found" snuff film from former denizens of the asylum. He becomes what he beholds. Shouldn't an alert siren go off with the klangon bells like on a destroyer, signaling "battle stations".I think Skeleton Crew is best labeled as an OK B movie, get for drive-ins where you can make out during the movie. Or, was this totally tongue in cheek. Has anyone talked with the director. No special features....which would reveal his intent. This would have helped.There are plenty of old,decayed, abandoned asylums everywhere and aspiring filmmakers. I am sure we will see many more ASYLUM films.UPDATE: I did some thinking and decided it is a SPOOF. Why? Everyone seems to be doing a tongue in cheek performance. And at the end of the credits a guy makes a satirical comment. The director is over the top. Europeans love to dish back our own culture to us. And they often do it in a very subtle manner. And the "found" films try to one up our version of horror films. That's why there is confusion for us on this movie.Did anyone catch the reference to Michael Powell's PEEPING TOM. One crew member gets skewered by a huge spear at the end of a camera, which films his agony. In PEEPING TOM, the killer does the same thing and uses a tripod with a mirror attached. I think it is all a spoof on several films, including the stormy weather and accident that propels them to the asylum (this has been done many times). So if you look at as a spoof with European sensibilities and as a B movie, it is OK. I may even rent it again, as I ony paid 25 cents for rental due to a special.

It's funny. As I was watching the opening of SKELETON CREW, I thought I might be in for a treat, a sort of psycho killer thriller set in a weird decaying mental institution whose staff had long gone off the deep end. Almost 30 minutes(!)in, we find that what has been presented to us, regarding a poor woman's ordeal after a car crash leaves her in an asylum while her boyfriend is supposedly being patched up, hunted by the hospital's crew, is simply footage for a low budget horror film . We are introduced to a Finnish film crew, tired and forlorn because they haven't been paid, the director fancying himself an auteur while his producer, back in LA, has no intention of spending any money on their film. Then, the director, Steven(Steve Porter)becomes obsessed with snuff film stock found by members of his crew, and we soon discover that spirits of the deranged hospital staff who committed torturous atrocities to patients back in the 70s before the hospital was closed and searched by police are haunting the halls. Steven, who begins to hunt and kill his actors and crew, using methods perfected by the ghouls who once operated the now dilapidated hospital fallen to ruin, could very well be controlled by the evil spirit of the former director of the asylum, "The Auteur"(what the hospital director called himself when filming his torture of patients in the basement of the building). The hunted will need to somehow evade their pursuer, but any avenue of escape seems remote since their van's engine, of course, doesn't crank and phones have no signal. Meanwhile, The Auteur is able to capture and butcher each crew member one at a time when separate from the pack.Kind of a "poutpori" of various subgenres. It's a slasher movie. It's a torture movie. It's a satire on low budget filmmaking. It's got ghosts and a madman on the loose doing their bidding. It incorporates the idea of existence of snuff movies. It's a black comedy whose humor is geared towards the slasher genre and it's many clichés. It pokes fun at the "film within the film" structure. The mental hospital is an extremely notable asset as is the excellent special gore effects highlighting some pretty unpleasant ultra violence including the use of a number of weapons including a chainsaw, set lights(which burns one poor fellow alive), bats with spikes(a homage to ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, perhaps?), power drill(an actor has no idea that Steven has substituted a real one for a prop!), and hammers(which pummel victims strapped to chairs by leather straps). The make-up effects(such grisly delights such as the bodies of live victims with limbs removed, the aforementioned burn victim whose skin chars before our eyes, gun shot wound in the back of a victim's skull)and camera work, not to mention the snuff reels, are first-rate. It's the unevenness of the bonkers plot which doesn't quite gel. SKELETON CREW is very tongue-in-cheek and should make for an easy double feature with a HOSTEL or SAW movie. I liked this a bit more than others who found it unwatchable; could be I was in the right mood for it. I wouldn't necessarily say SKELETON CREW is a success but it's dark heart is in the right place. That's a wrap.

Utterly dreadful. A pitiful slasher with no redeeming qualities. Drags on and on like a train wreck in slow motion and the acting is not camp, it's just plain bad. What is so unforgivable about this movie is that with all the ingredients: a derelict asylum and a lunatic movie director making snuff movies on the fly, its difficult to see how the makers could fail to make at least a halfway decent horror film. This one misses the mark by a mile. Spurious sex scenes and tiresome adolescent remarks about mainstream slashers such as Saw and Hostel weigh this plodding mess down even more. Only good as a cure for insomnia.

film crew making a film about a snuff film maker and serial killer from 30 years before finds that someone is killing them off and filming the gory happenings. The often stunning visual sense of the film is what keeps this film afloat even as the plot drops into cliché. The problem with the film is that the plot really doesn't do anything you haven't seen before. After a too long opening sequence of past events, something that turns out to the film being made, the film more or less becomes the tried and true story of the film crew being hunted by someone either in the building or among them. Its not badly done, but its not a story that has any new twists and turns. The real problem with the film is that there are numerous WTF moments as the film kind of does completely illogical things (I mean beyond not packing up and leaving). At one point some of the crew finds footage, actually an earlier sequence in the movie, that is suppose to be something the killer shot. How it was possible is not explained and it really strains credibility. Good enough to recommend with reservations, its the sort of thing that will entertain its intended audience, but not likely to win many converts outside of it.