A pirate radio station offers to grant wishes to listeners on full moon nights, but all of said wishes come with grave consequences as it seems that there have been monthly murder/suicides occurring since the radio station’s inception. Without knowing what sort of evil she might release, a teenage girl, who is grounded by her parents, makes a wish with the “Oracle” of the station and soon her friends are falling victim to evil possession.
Like a million horror films before it, we start of the film by being introduced to a band of sexy teenagers (played by actors most likely in their twenties) who pal around and generally act like annoying idiots (for lack of a more graceful label) to the point where I could care less if they fall victim to a maniac or curse of any sort….but we’ll get to that later on. The story goes, one of the sexy teens is grounded by her parents and cannot attend a party where she was planning to meet up with her crush; which in the teenage world, seems to be the equivalent of having your limbs sawed off. In her angst she calls a mystical pirate radio station and makes a wish that starts off a set of tragic events involving all of her friends and family. Apparently, only a young girl’s crush triangle and petty feud with her parents were at stake, which meant that the audience has nothing worthwhile invested in these characters when some of them start to die.
As the action rises, so too does my interest (albeit, only slightly). There is a series of demonic possessions that are undeniably reminiscent of the Evil Dead series, right down to the POV demon vision pursuing the victim. The introduction of supernatural elements helps me to mostly forget the annoying, teenage melodrama eating up 2/3 of the film. As mentioned before, if only the earlier parts of the story had raised the stakes enough, then we could actually care about what is happening to these characters. It does not help that on top of the story being uninteresting, and containing no depth, the characters are completely and utterly unlikeable. This is not the actors’ fault as their performances are not bad. It is a shame when an audience member becomes desensitized to horribly violent and tragic events being depicted on the screen, not due to over-exposure, but because of callousness.
Video
Widescreen 1.78:1. The picture is rather hazy throughout. The special f/x are not too bad so its a shame that some polish didn’t go into this film because poor video quality makes this seem just as cheap as it really is.
Audio
Dolby Digital 5.1 in English and 2.0 for French. The (not-so) spooky radio show moves around each speaker in clever ways during important exposition scenes and is effective in making it seem like this voice of influence is pursuing our main character. Alas, what he is saying is completely unconvincing in and of itself…but the sound people make a good effort. Overall? A pretty good sound mix.
Special Features
Trailer
Final Thoughts
Nothing at stake, unlikeable brats, a dash of semi-interesting supernatural elements that are completely borrowed from a superior film. More power to you if you can survive the first hour of the film. Your reward is not grand…but it could be worse.
