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 ike Mendez's The Convent is a Last Stand in a
Haunted House movie, and as such it has all the conventions of the horror
subgenre, including: a dumb cheerleader, abusive frat boys, a virgin female
lead, horny kids, and dumb cops. Add demonic nuns and priests and plenty of
tongues firmly planted in cheek and you'd think you have a perfect formula for a
Last Stand in a Haunted House movie, right? Well, you'd be wrong.
The Convent opens with a black leather-clad teenager
shooting up a convent sometime in the '60s. Fast-forward to the present, when a
group of college frat boys, their dates, and one of their pledge decides it
would be a great idea to vandalize the interior of the now-condemned convent. No
sooner than the kids start necking, smoking pot, and getting harassed by the
cops, do demonic nuns, complete with glowing green eyes and what looks like neon
liquid in place of veins, pops up to do their, er, demonic thing.
I am hard pressed to find anything really good about The
Convent, and would consider the movie a total waste of time except for the
fact that it's a pretty funny film. The movie is a complete parody of the Last
Stand in a Haunted House subgenre, and as such I found myself laughing too much
when I should be scared -- or at the very least, intrigued. While others might
appreciate the movie for its oddball hilarity, I was somewhat disappointed that
the movie was too tongue-in-cheek, which meant there were no scenes of
tension or even excitement.
The
demonic nuns in The Convent, as previously mentioned, looks more like
late-night ravers with a hangover and bad make-up than they do demons. What this
means is they don't look convincing, and director Mendez chose to cut out frames
within scenes to give the impression of the demons shuffling awkwardly to and
fro instead of lumbering or walking normally. I guess this could be considered
creative, since there's very little else to find creative about The Convent.
The script is written by newcomer Chaton Anderson, who I'm
not quite sure is male or female. (Is "Chaton" a man's name or a
woman's name?) Whatever the writer's gender, I appreciated the comedy in the
movie -- it's the only thing I appreciated, actually. In one particularly
hilarious scene, after being informed that her virgin brother is going to be
turned into a vessel for the son of Satan, our heroine Clarissa (Joanna Canton)
sighs, "Mom's gonna be pissed!" By simple reason that Clarissa is the
female lead, she of course looks pure as snow and is the constant complainer of
the group. It gets tiresome after a while.
In fact, the movie's first 40 minutes was an exercise in
clichés, as each clichéd character does and says one cliché thing after
another. Maybe director Mendez and writer Anderson sought to achieve this sense
of "been there, done that, let's do it again," but I found it to be
tedious and a waste of time.
When the demonic nuns show up and the blood started
flowing, I expected things to pick up. I was disappointed. As a result, the
entire film felt tedious and a waste of time. It's a funny waste of time, but
still a waste of time.
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