Crazy Eights - After Dark Horror Fest |  | Director: James K. Jones
Actors: Traci Lords, Frank Whaley, Dina Meyer, George Newbern, Dan DeLuca
Studio: Lions Gate
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.98
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Rating:  19 reviews
Sales Rank: 34345
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 80 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.4 x 0.7
MPN: 22683
UPC: 031398226833
EAN: 0031398226833
ASIN: B00127RAIU
Theatrical Release Date: 2007
Release Date: March 18, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
No Description Available.
Genre: Horror
Rating: R
Release Date: 18-MAR-2008
Media Type: DVD
Amazon.com
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
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 19
 Despite its plot holes, an entertaining and effective psychological horror film January 31, 2010
Daniel Jolley (Shelby, North Carolina USA)
The really bad thing about group-shared repressed memories is the fact that, sooner or later, one member of the group is going to bring those repressed memories back to life and basically ruin the lives of everyone else in the group. That's pretty much what happens here in Crazy Eights. Six old friends are reunited following the death of one member of their Crazy Eights gang from childhood (you'll notice that six plus one makes seven, not eight - hmmm, I wonder if that might be significant?). Anyway, this guy apparently offs himself and then, by way of his will, gets the rest of the gang to come back and open an old time capsule from their childhood. Ah, the power of memory! How it cuts like a knife through one's very soul!
Crazy Eights gives us quite a diverse group of characters, including a kind-hearted padre, a foul-mouthed doctor, and a level-headed college professor. All six of the reunited friends seem to be successful but not exactly well-adjusted, as each of them has recently been haunted by recurring nightmares. The reason for those nightmares slowly begins to emerge after they open the time capsule and find more than childhood toys lurking inside. Despite their sudden, understandable eagerness to get back home to their normal lives, they soon find themselves trapped inside a huge facility of some kind. Herein lurk the real skeletons in their collective closet. Thanks to the opening moments of the film, we viewers already know what this place is, but it takes a while for the characters to figure it out. Put to the psychological test, several of them break down, but none can flee from the dark destiny haunting the corridors of the place. One by one, the group of six is isolated and marked for death.
I seem to have enjoyed this After Dark Horror Fest offering more than most. While certain aspects of the story could use a little fleshing out, the circumstances make for quite a delicious little stew of guilt and horror. The old building has tons of atmosphere, and some really good acting helps milk the creepy drama for all it is worth. Traci Lords proves that she can act and George Newbern is superb as the padre - but it is Frank Whaley who really steals the show. Not only does his foul mouth help liven up many a scene, he more than anyone else really brings out the psychological dimensions of the story. Admittedly, the whole bit about characters foolishly wandering off by themselves and thereby inviting their own destruction is undeniably formulaic, while the premise under which the group finds themselves trapped like this is flimsy at best. Likewise, the film provided me with more questions than answers in terms of the backstory. Despite all this, Crazy Eights still turned out to be an effectively creepy little horror film as far as I'm concerned, one that fits quite well into the After Dark Horror Fest collection.
 I want my time back.... December 11, 2009
Layde.Unek
Luckily I didn't have to pay to see this movie, it was on my Comcast on Demand free movie list, which I actually had this movie on my queue for Netflix, so thought I'd check it out. I couldn't even get all the way through the movie it just would not hold my attention. I want my hour back from watching what I did watch.
Don't waste your time! November 20, 2009
ecotopian
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. September 30, 2009
Robert P. Beveridge (Cleveland, OH)
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 December 30, 2008
B. E Jackson (Pennsylvania)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 19
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