It looks as though the Midwest isn’t done yet with subjecting horror fans to the most frightening things of all; bad acting, poor directing, miserable editing . . . . oh, I could go on, but just mentioning these few bits, most should get the idea. Having already sat through Central Film Company’s atrocious Living Nightmare, a movie with a very appropriate title, I already knew what I was in for. Til Death is yet another amateur horror film that proves that not everyone should be even own a video camera.

Til Death follows the downward spiral of Candace, a young girl from an abusive home who, after being drugged at a party and then taken to the emergency room, has left to start a new career as a stripper. Her new friends however have gotten her involved in a life of sex and drugs save for one man, Sean, who has taken a liking to her, though he does tend to be a bit more of a stalker . . . .

Okay, I’m seriously not going to waste your time with the plot, because ultimately, it doesn’t matter and is utterly ridiculous. Til Death doesn’t necessarily feel like a horror film at all, unless the dangers of smoking crack and sleeping around are supposed to be what scares you, and that just sounds more like an after school special. No, Til Death is much more of an endurance test, seeing just how much bad acting and frivolous story you can handle before deciding that you’ve had enough, and believe me, after about 15 minutes, I’d had more than my fair share. Oh, but I couldn’t simply stop watching, as much as I wanted to, and Til Death would prove to be something that would try my patience as a reviewer.

There are far too many instances in this film where I really couldn’t determine if the actors in fact were following a script, or if it was just made up. It feels as though they are forcing themselves to come up with what the next line would be. If this is an attempt to make the dialog feel more “real,” it’s a horrible attempt at best. There really isn’t much redeeming about it and it’s certainly not written in such a way to pull you into the story, and there are far too many portions in the story that could have been completely omitted to push the movie along. Instead, it simply drags on and on and feels like it’s going absolutely nowhere.

Watching Til Death, there are many things that came to mind that I would have rather been sitting through. A porno for example, because the acting is better and the directors actually use these things like lighting and sound, something unheard of for this low budget film.. A soap opera really would have been better as well, and while they all have some poor acting, they stand far above what Til Death offers. I’d even had thoughts that I had just bought some baby starfish for a salt water aquarium that

From the two films that I’ve had the sit through, I’ve noticed the film makers have a tendency to want to overuse certain tricks. With Living Nightmare, it was sound effects, the same ones used so many times that you could have made a drinking game based around them. With Til Death, the slow-motion and tracer effects end up being something that might have been a nice touch once or twice, but they end up being added far too frequently making the movie visually more annoying than anything. There are scenes that drag on far too long thanks to this abuse, though honestly, the pathetic story brings it down even more. After 30 minutes, I felt that I had been watching it for at least an hour, but sadly found that I still had nearly 60 minutes to endure.

How do you make a bad film even worse . . . . besides what has already been written about in this review? It’s easy when you add in track after track of really bad hip-hop, and most of the time for absolutely no reason. Look, just because every Hollywood feature tries to put together some poor music selection, that doesn’t mean that you need to do it for your no-budget horror film, though at least most of those horror films actually have a number of metal bands on the soundtrack.

You may be wondering about special features, or maybe not, but either way, there are none. I’ve never been so thankful about a lack of added features.

Til Death has to be, without a doubt, one of the most pointless films I’ve ever sat through, and it certainly doesn’t even deserved to be classed as a horror film and stating that it’s a cautionary tale would more likely be the case . . . . if it’s how NOT to make a movie (funny, wasn’t this essentially what I covered with Living Nightmare?) Til Death is avoidable, and that’s being polite. The back of the package basically summarizes that the only escape is through death, and while the thought did cross my mind, I’ll simply leave you with the knowledge that there are far better things to spend 90 minutes doing.

-mike-