"The Scorned" is a watchable if overall pretty decent entry.
**SPOILERS**
Arriving at a secluded beach house, Kirsten, (Jenna Lewis) Oliver, (Steven Hill) Seth, (Reichen Lehmkuhl) D.Q, (Jon Dalton) Jennifer, (Tonya Cooley) and Trish, (Stacie Jones Upchurch) prepare for a weekend of partying and fun. As the group has a lot of history, they take a while to get used to the arrangements. When one of them suddenly dies in the house, the others get freaked out, and owner Matt, (Bob Guiney) wants them to let it go and get on with their weekend. As the weekend continues and more strange deaths occur nearby, they start to dig into the house's past and come across an incident in the past involving him, his fiancée Raina, (Trish Schneider) and her friend Nichola, (Trishelle Cannatella) that turned into an ugly accident. Using this with other information gathered from their search, they realize the true happenings in the house and rush to put an end to them once and for all.
The Good News: This here wasn't all that bad, and had some pretty good points in it. This here does a pretty great job of staying watchable when it's not concentrating on the horror elements. That is a hard task, as most don't even get that, yet this here never really becomes slow or boring. This is a great task to accomplish and that gives the film a high sensibility. The film gets into it's best moments with it's death scenes, which are quite exhilarating and include some great action scenes. There's a really great meltdown from being sprayed with acid where two victims, sprayed at the same time, burn down to charred remains together, being impaled from the back with a spiked rod and having it rip their heart out, slashed across the throat with a fire-poker, thrown head-first down a staircase and having a throat ripped out, among more kills. It's a shame that most of those are verified by being shown what the after-affect looks like, but there's still enough blood and gore in here to really be impressed. That they're all involved in pretty big action scenes makes them even better. There's more to the scenes than just the violent death, and by doing so makes the scene seem even more fun. That all of them are like this is a great surprise. This one even features a few mildly decent shock scenes, including a brilliant one where the ghost appears in silhouette underneath sheets of fluffed bed-sheets, then disappears when it's fixed properly. That is a pretty chilling scene, and this one does have a few good similar scenes along the way. These here help to make the film slightly better than it should've been.
The Bad News: This one wasn't terrible, but it did have some problems. The biggest one is that there's not a whole lot of action in the film. This one's real action scenes are essentially it's killing scenes, and without a super-huge body count, there's some really long stretches of nothing going on. It manages to still stay interesting, but it does have some time between that are quite short on things going on. This one really could've used a couple other good action scenes to really pump up the pace somewhat, as the only time anything happens is the murder scenes. Another flaw is the film's tired and clichéd plot. There's no counting how many of these are taken from other films out there, with almost no tweaking whatsoever, and then just dropped straight in and nothing is made of it. The fact that it plays out like every single revenge film out there doesn't do it any favors. The last big flaw is the obvious lack of anything done in the gore scenes. This one really concentrates on the after-affects for it's gore and there's just hardly any done with on-screen kills before going to the aftermath to get the gore shown. That could be a problem for some, as the kills are certainly graphic enough but this one to be mostly the way it is would be a flaw. These here hold the film back.
The Final Verdict: This isn't a severely flawed film, but it does have enough good points to make it watchable or at least a guilty pleasure. Those who enjoy the gimmick behind the film or are just plain curious about it should give it a shot, while those who don't like it or think the flaws would be more overbearing would be advised to seek caution.
Rated R: Graphic Language, Nudity, Violence and several sex scenes
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