Running time: 94 minutes
Starring: Joe Absolom, Tom Bell, Lara Belmont, Melanie Gutteridge, Lukas Haas
Rating 1 out of 10
If you hear the sound of leather hitting flesh during Long Time Dead, don't worry - it's just writer-director Marcus Adams flogging a dead horse. The teen slasher, long consigned to the movie graveyard, has been hastily revived in the first major British horror film to be made in this country since 1987's Hellraiser. Regrettably, this may well be the last.
Cliches lurk in the shadows, dialogue creaks almost as much as the floorboards, and the characters seem predisposed to getting themselves killed in prowling secluded areas on their ownsome.
Next to American efforts like eepers Creepers, which also blends horror and the supernatural, Long Time Dead barely sustains a pulse.
Rob (Joe Absolom), Stella (Lara Belmont), Webster (Lukas Haas), Spencer (James Hillier), Joe (Mel Raido), Liam (Alec Newman) and girlfriend Annie (Melanie Gutteridge) share a three-storey house in London, run by shady landlord Becker (Tom Bell), who lives on the ground floor.
Together with Spencer's girlfriend Lucy (Marsha Thomason), who lives on a houseboat on the Thames, the group cut loose for the evening at a swish nightclub.
After several hours of dancing and boozing, the friends retire to a back room to dabble with a Ouija board, under the supervision of believer Lucy. What begins as a light-hearted prank soon turns into a nightmare when the pointer springs to life, spelling out the message ALL DIE.
Liam flees in horror, clearly upset by the night's events. Soon after, Annie dies in an horrific accident fall from the nightclub roof, and the friends begin to turn on one another, convinced they have unleashed a bloodthirsty, otherworldly force.
Suspicion and paranoia quickly tears the group apart as an unseen killer moves amongst the friends. Newcomer Joe comes under close scrutiny as the outsider in the household, as does Becker. Even poor Liam is fingered as a possible suspect.
As the body count rises, so dark secrets come to light, and one of the group is forced to confront childhood memories steeped in witchcraft and murder.
Long Time Dead certainly has its moments, most of them cheap scares, with plenty of blood and gore sloshing about on screen. Unfortunately, the longer the film drags on, the more ridiculous the story becomes, complicated with a meandering back story about a secret satanic cult involving Becker and a student.
Consequently, one of the characters is marked as a killer, and a potential vessel for a supernatural entity, but the stench of red herring is overpowering. As expected, the least likely suspect turns out to be a raging psychopath (brought to life with fleeting computer special effects), although if you've seen the trailer, you already know his/her identity. So much for dramatic tension.
Performances are perfunctory, but the actors have fine pairs of lungs, and they exercise them at every opportunity.
