Now available on VOD
Cast:
Aaron Ashmore as Marcus
Cindy Sampson as Carmen
Meghan Heffern as Sara
Directed by Jon Knautz
Review:
The Shrine is one of those assembly line movies, borrowing parts from other movies without really adding much of its own. There’s a little Hostel mixed with a touch of The Wicker Man, and finally, some of The Exorcist added for extra spice.
At 80 minutes without credits, it certainly doesn’t overstay its welcome, but it never does anything to distinguish itself from its influences and ends up feeling pretty pointless.
Cindy Sampson stars as Carmen, a journalist allegedly working for a newspaper even though it looks far more like an accounting firm and only two other employees are ever seen.
Carmen is frustrated because her boss is giving her puff pieces like a story on bees while she yearns for hard-hitting investigative journalism. But she is being punished for what is referred to as a “controversial” story, though for some reason we are never told more than that.
The kind of story she’s looking for presents itself when she reads about a handful of American tourists who’ve gone missing in Eastern Europe. One of them lived nearby. His mother claims that the police are uninterested, which is very hard to believe. If five Americans went missing in the same place, surely law enforcement would be at least a little concerned.
So Carmen decides to head to Poland and investigate herself. Along for the trip are her photographer boyfriend Marcus (Aaron Ashmore, who couldn’t look more like his brother), and newspaper intern Sara (Meghan Heffern).
All the expected, familiar story beats soon commence. A spooky, isolated village that seems stuck in the past. Creepy villagers obviously not sharing everything they know. Characters who insist that they should turn around and go home, and characters who insist on doing the opposite. Ignoring obvious danger and ending up captives of the creepy locals.
They soon find themselves part of some sort of ritual that isn’t even partially explained. The captors speak Polish (half the movie is in the foreign language) and there are no subtitles. This is probably meant to make the captors more frightening, but it just makes things confusing.
Compounding the predictability is the fact that the trio of junior detectives seem more like high school students lost on a field trip rather than journalists. The performances are bland and there is zero attempt to create a sympathetic character, making it hard to care about what happens to the threesome.
In addition to the brief running time and decent makeup effects, there is a great scene near the end that prevents The Shrine from being a total wash. A character hears someone/something ferociously attack and kill a nice family in their home. It’s quite chilling.
But then we shift to some kind of demonic possession, and the movie suddenly doesn’t appear to know what kind of story it’s telling. Who are the strange men in robes, and are they good or evil? What kind of ritual are they performing, and why? What is the story behind the statue in the fog and the “curse” that came with it? None of these questions are answered.
Though it fails as a horror movie, The Shrine would make for a great drinking game. Were viewers to take a shot every time Marcus says “we have to go back” or “we need to get out of here,” they would be passed out cold long before the end credits rolled.
