Deadly Presence (2012) User Reviews

Deadly Boredom or Bored Presence, your choice...

[paul_haakonsen · 2/10 · 16 December 2015]

"Deadly Presence" is a very slow paced horror movie. It is clear that director Shane Cole wanted to prolong the story in an attempt to build up the suspense and to build up for a climatic revealing of what was going on. And the idea worked in theory, but it failed horribly in the movie. As such, the movie was excruciating slow and uneventful.

The story is about three friends spending a night in an allegedly haunted house, and one of them brings back home with her more than she bargained for.

I will say that the production value was good, and the movie makers did manage to get a good result from fairly limited resources. And the acting in the movie was adequate, although nothing particularly memorable. For a small cast movie, there was more pressure on the acting talents, but they held up themselves well enough.

For a horror movie, you have to look long and far for anything even remotely scary in "Deadly Presence", and the movie suffers badly from that fact.

If you enjoy a good horror movie, then your time and money is better spent elsewhere, as there is very little to be had from "Deadly Presence", aside from acute boredom.

Indie horror is very dull

[Leofwine_draca · 2/10 · 1 July 2017]

DEADLY PRESENCE is one of those indie horrors that for the most part consists of a young woman wandering around a house and occasionally chatting to her friends. The only thing it will inspire is boredom in the viewer, because it's nothing more than dull, dull, dull, with very little incident of note. Aside from the usual 'curse' set-up, there's no real story here, and certainly no momentum.

Why would you hang out at a dead girl's apartment????

[aztrshbyz · 3/10 · 1 June 2017]

Very s-l-o-w- moving horror film where nothing much happens between the beginning and the end. Three girls have a seance in a haunted house and one of the girls brings a presence home with her that ultimately causes her to commit suicide. The friend who is with her at her apartment decides to hang out while knowing the dead girl is in the bathtub, doesn't call the police or paramedics and attempts to find a reason why her friend did what she did. Unfortunately, the film never gives that explanation and you are left wondering what the whole point of the movie is.

Many horror movies ask the viewer to suspend disbelief - in this one, it is really, really hard to do that. You have the typical character who does things that make no sense ("I'm not going to call the police because my friend didn't want me to, and it would be too hard to explain"), the convenience of finding what you need to find when you're looking for it (in this case, a buried body in a large park where there is really no reason for her to go looking for it), the lead's decision to take care of the dead body herself (she decides to try to attempt arson) and of course, hanging out at the haunted house at the end when everything is going to you know what.

I really felt this movie might have promise. I think the premise is good, but it just didn't go anywhere. Add the unsatisfying ending and bad writing/plot line and you might end up asking yourself why you watched it in the first place. This isn't the worst horror movie I've ever seen (not by long shot), but I was really disappointed.

Deadly Presence: Unforgivably bad

[Platypuschow · 1/10 · 27 September 2017]

For me 1/10's are rare creatures, it implies a film had not one single redeeming feature, no entertainment value and quite frankly offended me by its existence.

Deadly Presence is one of those. A terribly made, incredibly boring lifeless mess that I struggled to get through.

Following a girl named Andie who is called by a frantic friend to go round to her apartment and becomes embroiled in a supernatural plot.

Very little happens, the script is minimal due to practically no dialogue and it's just so very very dire.

The Good:

Fifty shades of none

The Bad:

Concept is dumb

Story defies logic

Mind numbingly boring

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

I need to vet films better

Get to the point already!

[bbw1957 · 5 July 2015]

Dragging a story can sometimes bore the death out of people. And when you never get to the main reason you're telling it, can frustrate you even more. This film did just that to me. The characters weren't what I expected from reading the first review. I was hoping to see intellectuals doing the right realistic way to handle emergencies, instead I found idiots, except one real surprise in the beginning, doing just the opposite. I was so bored I actually fell asleep. I wanted to see this film, but to know fault of my own, couldn't tell you at all what happened. I will try again and if I do fall asleep once more, then I know this wasn't what I expected and was sad to have wasted another showing. As the Terminator quoted "I'll be back!".

Well, I finally got to watch the whole movie, and honestly, I wish I watched something else. Not only does it show stupidity in people, but has an ending that leaves you wondering, "why did I watch this?". Please,for your own sake, pass on this movie.

Truly boring

[dianereneew · 2/10 · 28 December 2013]

I chose to watch this movie based on the 7.3 rating. I should have known better since there were absolutely no comments at all.

The first fifteen minutes of the movie seems like it is right out of a crappy 80's movie, then.... ABSOLUTELY NOTHING happens. At all. For the next hour plus.

The acting is atrocious. The actress playing the main character has obviously never taken an acting class and definitely does not have natural ability.

The sound editing was also very strange. There were moments where you were tuned in to the background sounds and then the sound would go completely blank. It was as if the sound engineer was focused on dubbing sounds into the movie and then just turning the mic off.

The only reason I gave this a 2 out of 10 was that the concept had potential.

All in all this movie was like a very bad student film. Little creativity and no skill in acting or editing. Very disappointing.

Was Really Enjoying It Until The End

[smakar · 5/10 · 17 May 2015]

I see that the two other reviews have differing opinions. As for myself, I was really enjoying this little flick. I thought the story was engrossing, there was actually one jump scare that caught me off-guard (I'm usually immune to those), and thought the lead actress (almost the only actor/actress) carried the film quite well. She was definitely not the typical, Hollywood model heroine - instead, she was sincere, level-headed, and courageous in SPITE of being very afraid (which I feel is the true definition of courage).

A couple of scenes were even reminiscent of Hitchcock, built on suspense, not gross-out gore.

AND THEN THE END CAME (and here be spoilers).

Why, Oh Why, must so many movies of the horror genre end with a downer? I'll compare this movie to another I just watched (for a second time): Entity (2012). Yes, that movie also had a downer of an ending (regarding who lived and who died), but it fit the story and made sense. In Deadly Presence, not only was it a downer, but it truly felt as if they ran out of money (which is believable, for the budget was $1600!) and it was extremely frustrating! I'm just tired of movies where I spend a couple of hours rooting for someone, becoming emotionally invested in them, and then having them die, with no payoff what so ever! As I'm writing this, I thought of another brilliant movie - Oculus. It too had a downer of an ending, but like Entity, the ending FIT! The ending of Deadly Presence was simply frustrating - I truly felt like smashing my fist into the screen! So my hat's off to the director and cast (I thought the two secondary actresses, the girlfriend and the unexpected guest, were hilarious), and this movie looked fantastic for the budget. But please, for your next movie, think about how the audience will feel once the movie is over! I go to movies to forget how depressing and unfair life can be - I don't want to be reminded of it yet again (I can read the news for free for that).

Another "What Happened?"

[gpeltz · 4/10 · 18 June 2015]

It's Deadly Presence, (2012) Written and Directed by Shane Cole, Spoiler Alert ahead; The movie is very low budget, So much so, that the plot might have been structured around the modest budget. A one point in the movie, A fire was to have been set, it didn't happen, for what I suspect was budgetary reasons. This is not a very high concept movie. It's Standard horror film fare.

A bad house, with a history of death and murder, captures the soul of one girl, Candace played Kathy Sue Holdorf, She calls to her friend Andie Played by Megan Lynn, and tells of her nightmarish situation, Lynn, who practically carries the movie by herself, has to figure out what happened to her friend, and what made her kill herself. To be forthright, I was not impressed with her acting, Megan Lynn virtually plays the movie on a single emotion, fear. Her one note performance made it difficult for me to identify with her. Perhaps she was written that way, Had she called the police, in spite of her friends suicide note, the matter would have been taken care of at the start. Expect the expected; Ancient Horror Movie cliché dragged up for,"Deadly Presence" To the female lead, "No matter how many warnings you are given, You must be sure to ignore them all".

The pacing was slow, there is a common fallacy here demonstrated by the filmmaker who believes that by slowing down the action leading to a scare moment, that he is creating suspense. Not when it draws attention to itself. The sound design was spotty at best, sometimes here, other times not here. To the movies credit, there were some good, creepy scenes, Well framed and minimally performed, Some of the creepy scenes could have been enhanced with appropriate sound effects, or music (can we get a little glissando on the high strings for this shot?) A waste of time, probably, but if you are into this type of horror you could give it a try, Four out of Ten, "We are on a tight budget" Stars

Not bad for a little indie film

[seanwillmovielover · 8/10 · 19 February 2014]

So I watched this film on VOD about a week ago. I read some interesting stuff from online reviews. Sounded like it was a super low budget film, but was making some headway in the online world. Thought I would try it out. It was a low budget film that's for sure. On that note though, it held up quite well. I noticed the budget stated under 2,000.00 ?? Anyways, the acting was pretty good. The story was a bit slow paced, but I didn't mind since they built up the story quite well, and I did get creep-ed out in a few scenes. I thought the back story about the 'killers' could have been hashed out differently, however, I was not confused at all and was able to follow the story. The audio wasn't too bad. The 'score' was creepy and worked. Unlike a lot of low budget movies that usually stick to that shaky hand held camera work, I was surprised to see this was shot on a more professional scale.