Millennial Trash: Cult (2007)

It still isn't any worse than Scientology.  Today's Film is Cult, a 2007 Horror Film by the man who would later bring us Dragon Wasps.  Good pedigree.  The Film is notable for...pretty much nothing.  I have a silly pretense for picking this one, but I'll get to that later.  One of its Stars- Taryn Manning- is on Orange is the New Black, while another was on Supernatural.  Is that enough for you?  One of the Writers also Wrote Girls Gone Psycho, while another was a Motion Graphics Producer (whatever that is) on Storage Wars.  I'm not really selling this, am I?  The Plot involves a fictitious Cult that dies off, but the Leader returns to try again 20 years later.  Will he succeed and doom mankind?  To find out, read on...

In a true example of lazy Writing, we get a 2-minute long Exposition Dump via a Narrator that sounds like the guy from the 1990s Outer Limits Revival.

The short version: this lady in China died, but now her spirit can bring you power.  Some guys finds her Amulet.

He tries to do a Ceremony where a bunch of Women commit suicide and give him their souls for power...or something.

Among the Women is...Sarah Lieving (Credited here as Sarah Liering for some reason)!

Yeah, she does nothing.  At all.

Moving on, the group all dies, but the Ceremony doesn't work when one Woman kills herself in the wrong way for it to work.

20 years later, the Woman's Daughter- Miner- is in College and studying the Cult for her World Religions Term Paper.  How convenient.

People in her Study Group start to die off, but the early ones are passed off as Suicide.

Yes, people often cut their eyes out and then stab themselves to commit suicide!

The culprit is the guy running the Temple where the killings took place- shocking!  He's possessed by the Spirit of the Leader, which was made possible by the power...for some reason.

The Spirit that they worship tells our heroes how to save the day.  Why she can't do it herself is...um...next caption!

After a confusing finale, they defeat the Leader and destroy the Amulet.  All is saved...until the Narrator says that it is only over for now...or something.  The End.

Eh, it isn't good.  The Film is not completely-terrible, but it suffers from so many little problems.  The Story doesn't flow in a fluid way, for one.  They just dump the Story on you at the beginning, which just feels lazy.  The actual Story is goofy.  On top of that, the Characters are pretty stock and uninteresting.  They tried a little...but not nearly enough.  There are also some dubious CG Effects that aren't really necessary for the Film to work.  When you can't do them right and you don't need them, make the right call!  The whole thing is just so uninspired.  That is really the worst thing- they didn't do anything notable or all that interesting here.  It didn't even let me get much fun out of my continual issues with Sarah Lieving in Films.  Apparently the part she was in was shot later to make the Film more interesting.  It didn't help much.  On the plus side, they give us a few subtle hints as to when it was made...

Next up, I cover the 6th and final Josh Kirby Film.  As an 'Era' ends, will it get better?  Stay tuned...