Prison of the Psychotic Damned

When I saw the trailer for this movie, I was convinced I should pass on it. But then the footage showed the characters at the Buffalo Central Terminal and I had to see it. I should have gone with my first instinct.

In a move sure to destroy her career, a professor brings a rag tag bunch of misfits to the abandoned terminal building to hunt ghosts and make a documentary on their search.

Let's meet our cast of characters.

1. Professor Rayna Bloom - seems no nonsense at first, but eventually you realize she's kinda psycho. You can tell she's the professor as she has her hair up and wears glasses.
2. Jason, the camera guy - immature, delusional about his effect on woman (it's not good), and thinks fart jokes are hysterical.
3. Nessie, Rayna's friend - wants to help Rayna with her work, dresses and acts like a six year old, but looks forty. Her mittens have strings on them going into her coat sleeves. It's never clear whether she's retarded or if there is something else wrong with her cranial functioning, but at least she's usually happy.
4. Aurora, the psychic - the least obnoxious character as she has no personality, but she has a legitimate reason to be included in the ghost hunt.
5. Kansas, condescending goth - nasty, bitchy, antagonistic loser who is only there because her daddy makes her do stuff to keep her trust fund. Has no redeeming qualities and her inclusion in this excursion shows that Rayna has no powers of critical thinking and will definitely lose her funding.

The group has never worked together before, don't get along well, and three of the five have no idea how to work any of the ghost hunting equipment. Jason has to explain what the equipment is and what it does. They don't get any instructions on how to use it, but that's okay since the ghost hunt doesn't begin until we're almost an hour into the movie.

Nessie turns out to be a bad choice as a helper. She freaks out after seeing a weird looking guy, which everyone convinces her is a homeless guy. But the viewer knows he isn't due to the bloody mess that is his face. Later when Kansas sees someone who they assume is the same guy, Nessie runs away and says she can't do the ghost hunt. Seriously? What does she think they are doing there? If she can't handle being with five other people in the day time, what is she going to do when it's night and they find something paranormal?

To make it seem spookier than a closed railroad terminal, the story goes that hundreds of people have died in the building. The Professor states it was turned into a prison and an asylum where doctors operated on people. Also a serial killer took up residence there and increased the body count, so it's the most haunted place around.

There are flashbacks that have sound effects which are hilarious, even though they aren't supposed to be funny, such as the sound of the guys head hitting the desk. The flashbacks are annoying as they are cliche stuff that filmmakers do with the sudden jarring loud sounds intended to make you jump.

The opening scene in the movie is completely pointless. If you left it on the cutting room floor, it would not make one difference, except to make the movie more enjoyable. The film opens with 10+ minutes of Kansas alone in her room, dancing, reading bad poetry, cutting her wrists, and sitting in the bathtub. It adds nothing to the storyline and doesn't provide any explanation for why she is such a jerk.

Also there is a weird scene where Rayna destroys Jasons cell phone after it goes off. She insists there are no cell phones in the building during the investigation. You'd expect it to come up later as a plot point, but phones are never mentioned again. I suppose it's just a way to show us why no one used their phones, but you would think the characters would mention it.

But the main problem with the movie is that when you have unlikeable characters, especially those who are nasty human beings that you wouldn't want to spend even one minute in the same room with, the viewer doesn't care when they die. In fact, I was rooting for Kansas to get it. She was so annoying. I felt slightly sorry for Nessie as she was so simple. But when Jason thinks Nessie has gone off on her own because she wants to have sex with him, you just wonder what sort of an idiot he really is. So much stupidity.