* (One star)
Welcome to Grovestown, your typical Bible-thumping backwater with a typically sordid history. Years before, you see, an angry evangelical mob burned a pagan mother of two to death as vengeance for a murder she didn’t commit. Now her two sons are back, and they’ve unleashed a bit of witchcraft (courtesy of their mother’s spell books) so hellish that you almost wonder if the born-again zealots weren’t right to kill that evil witch in the first place. No matter—plenty of other things in this horror flick make even less sense, from the ever-Jewish Adam Goldberg’s laughable attempt at playing a Jesus-loving redneck to the Podunk town itself, which nonetheless sports a megachurch and high school big enough to serve greater Atlanta. Making these nagging oversights worse, the second-rate spooks—clear knockoffs from The Ring—don’t scare anyone; the jokes are flat; and the movie is otherwise so bad that it doesn't even deserve an analysis of whatever church criticism it tries to make. Luckily, lead actress Elizabeth Rice’s cuteness makes the viewing somewhat tolerable, and a special appearance by Rumer Willis is cut short early, sparing us from the worst horror of all: unchecked nepotism.—Daniel Gritzer, Eat Out writer
[This is a TONY staff review, written for the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival. It is not considered an official review and should not be read as such. Please think of it as a casual impression from a movie-loving friend.]