BOO – Another abandoned hospital, another bunch of brats who are determined to meet their fate there because it’s Halloween and we need another excuse for another dumb, dumb movie. That’s right, ‘Boo’ is as dumb as they come, and frankly that’s in its favour because if it’d made more sense, it just would’ve been boring. As it stands, I think it’s hilarious. I hadn’t seen it in ages – I don’t think I was necessarily missing anything in the interim, but I had quite a good laugh with it the other night all told. It’s an example of one of my favourite horror approaches, ‘movie as bad carnival ghost train’. That’s basically all it is, an excuse to move from one scene of unconvincingly put together supernatural mayhem to the next, with the additional feeling that the script is being written as the movie rolls along; ‘Boo’ does not even attempt to pull itself together till about halfway through, with the introduction of a backstory about a sinister ghost patient and Trish Coren‘s mum that ex Fango guy / future ‘Sharknado’ maven Anthony Ferrante probably made up during his directorial sandwich break one day. Even after it starts to cohere, it’s still wave after wave of silliness – skinless dogs come to life in elevators, floating clowns spew maggots from the hems of their multicoloured pants, bad cgi makes face melting seem more fun than it ought to be. Some of it’s so poorly coordinated that sequences often change tack halfway through and speed off in a different direction, using a barrage of bad lines and worse delivery as camouflage. Somehow, and it’s always a fine line, these clumsily tossed cards all land the right way up and manage to entertain rather than irritate (though not that everyone feels that way about it, judging by the apparent online consensus). I could go on at length about the hilarious shortfalls until you’ve heard a story that’s probably all too familiar already, but the more surprising thing about ‘Boo’ is that it can claim a few legit assets that make a less comical impression and prove there’s something approaching an effective horror movie lurking beneath the cheap laughs. The film’s unofficial lead character is the abandoned hospital itself, whose interior, a sprawl of grimy corridors and shadows zhuzhed up by nice photography and lighting, lends a rich and possibly undeserved atmosphere to proceedings. Speaking of undeserved, Dee Wallace turns up to dignify what she can of ‘Boo’ with a cameo appearance – never mind that her character thinks it’s more sensible to let an entire ward of patients burn to death rather than release one baddie! But that’s ‘Boo’ all over, a film where there’s really no difference between playing it straight and going for laughs. That works for me, because in my book ‘Boo’ is genuine and cheery early noughties trash, an antidote to the slicker stuff that predominated around the time, and I really wouldn’t mind a blu ray as it appears to be missing in action. Well I’d buy it, anyway.
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