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List Price: $14.98 | | Label: Lions Gate
Salesrank: 29079
Released: March 18, 2008 |
| Our Price: $8.65 |
| Used Price: $1.51 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
No Description Available.
Genre: Horror
Rating: R
Release Date: 18-MAR-2008
Media Type: DVD
Description of Crazy Eights - After Dark Horror Fest:
A solid cast of name actors enliven this indie ghost story from the 2007 After Dark Horror Fest. Dina Meyer, Frank Whaley, Traci Lords and Gabrielle Anwar are among a group of friends directed to an abandoned home by instructions left in a will by a deceased companion; naturally, they become trapped inside the structure, which is revealed to be a former hospital where behavioral experiments were conducted in prior decades on scores of children. That the group should have a connection to these experiments should come as no surprise to viewers, nor should the fact that the hospital's vengeful spirits plan to keep their secret safe by eliminating the intruders in Ten Little Indians fashion. In fact, there's very little fresh material for horror fans to gnaw on in Crazy Eights: The dialogue is leaden and the plot constantly forces one or more cast member to irrationally wander alone into the darkness in order to meet their fate. Director James K. Jones should be credited for bringing a professional and atmospheric look to his production, and for some restraint in the gore department, but the picture as a whole treads overly familiar territory and is therefore not particularly frightening. The cast certainly tries hard, especially Whaley and Lords. The sole extra is a handful of webisodes that follow the search for Miss HorrorFest 2007. -- Paul Gaita
Crazy Eights - After Dark Horror Fest Reviews:
Don't waste your time! 
2009-11-20 - Bad acting, no story, confusing, muddled, and boring. This is one of those supremely lame horror movies where one-dimensional characters wander aimlessly to creepy music, and nothing ever happens. But it is worse than that, because it is so obviously cheap and amateur. I can never get back the time I wasted watching this piece of dreck.
Crazy actors, crazy directors, etc. 
2009-09-30 - Crazy Eights (James K. Jones, 2006)
"By definition, a psychopath is a man without guilt." One would think that if a screenplay were going to start off in a college psychology class, the writer would at the very least check to make sure that he wasn't substituting the definition of sociopath (one "who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience") for the definition of psychopath (one who "manifests amoral and antisocial behavior, lack of ability to love or establish meaningful relationships, extreme egocentricity, failure to learn from mistakes, etc."; both definitions from [...]). This movie was pretty much destined to be picked up by After Dark Horrorfest from the first moment Jones (The Wreck) and Dan DeLuca (The Jersey Devil), the screenwriters, put pen to paper. We move from one movie with one actress (Eliza Dushku) who's made awful career choices recently to one movie with TWO actresses, Dina Meyer and Traci Lords, who've done the same. And yet somehow, when I compare Crazy Eights to the aforementioned Open Graves, it's a pretty easy choice for which one comes out on top.
This is an ensemble piece based around six friends--Jennifer Jones (Saw IV's Dina Meyer), Lyle Dey (TV character actor George Newbern), Gina Conte (Kinky Business' Traci Lords), Wayne Morrison (screenwriter DeLuca, whom you may know from TV's The Wire), Brent Sykes (Ruffian's Frank Whaley), and Beth Patterson (Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead's Gabrielle Anwar)--who get together for the funeral of a friend. While acting as the executor of his estate, they discover a letter asking them to go uncover a time capsule they all buried twenty years before. When they do, they discover that along with all the detritus of childhood, there's also a body inside. To figure out why, they may all have to dig into some very long repressed memories...
It's actually a pretty good idea, and the general caliber of the main cast--all of whom are at least veteran TV actors--should probably tip you off that this movie could have been a great deal better than it actually is. Another set of eyes on the script could have gotten rid of some of the more stupid plot points (e.g., they still remember each other twenty years later, but have forgotten pretty much everything else about growing up?) and tightened this a good deal. They might have come up with a really effective horror movie. (The ubiquitous-yet-treacly score didn't help in the least, though.) Potential it had plenty, but Jones, in his feature debut, didn't have nearly the experience to pull something like this off. Still, of the 2007 slate of After Dark movies, only Mulberry St. was better (not that After Dark traditionally sets the bar too high...), and when you compare it to the movie I watched just before it, Open Graves, it was a cinematic masterpiece. So maybe I'm being a little easier on it than I should, but if you're okay with completely shutting your brain off for an hour and a half and just enjoying the ride, the movie's atmosphere, along with bits of its acting, make up for the stupid score and idiotic plot holes. **
pretty scary 
2008-12-30 - I can see Crazy Eights has received many negative reviews, and well, those comments are completely understandable. If anything, the movie felt like it could and SHOULD have been so much more.
Instead, we were treated to a storyline that built slowly and gradually, and by the time the actual fear was present, there simply wasn't enough of it to satisfy me. So the movie comes up a BIT short.
With that said, I am honestly VERY impressed with the atmosphere of the place the eight people were trapped in. Around every single corner of the place you can sense dread and a place of many deaths and emotional confusion, and that was the obvious high point of the movie for me- the atmosphere and the fear that something very bad could happen at any moment.
So yeah, this movie is still pretty good and I recommend it, contains plenty of suspense along with a pretty good story- you just can't help but feel the story could have been even better than what we ended up with.
Disappointing & Leaves you Hanging
2008-11-29 - I have just started watching the AfterDark movies, and except for "Tooth and Nail", I have been far from disappointed. Until now. Like most of the reviews said, it just left me hanging. Not very well developed. It has GREAT potential to be a thriller if only the plot would have gone somewhere. I was left wondering why the girl wanted to kill them -- if it really was them; or was everything in their head? Was it all just part of the experiments? I like movies that make me think, but I like a little something to back up my thoughts. I feel like these ideas I'm just pulling out of thin air because the movie doesn't give much for you to think on....WAY too open-ended
A gory spook story that we've seen before, and seen better
2008-09-12 - Crazy Eights, an offering in the second year of the After Dark Horror Fest, is a gory spook story that doesn't offer anything that hasn't been seen plenty of times before, and were it not for it's game cast, this flick would be a pure waste of celuloid. Crazy Eights revolves around a group of old friends (Dina Meyer, George Newbern, Traci Lords, Frank Whaley, Burn Notice's Gabrielle Anwar, and The Wire vet Dan DeLuca who also co-wrote this flick) who are re-united after the passing of a friend of theirs. Turns out that all of them were involved in some sort of dark research and experiments, and soon enough all of them become trapped and start to get picked off. What kills Crazy Eights is it's predictability: you know what's going to happen right before it happens. Not to mention that there are so many non-sensical twists and developments that the film ends up becoming almost incomprehensible as it winds down, and the road getting there is more boring than anything else. The grainy look of the film doesn't make matters any better either, but as said before, the cast is good. All of them, even Lords (who pulls off a great and blood-curdling scream), manage to accomplish some great work, but that's the only thing about Crazy Eights worth mentioning really. All in all, you'll certainly see worse horror flicks, but you can certainly do better than what you get here.
