The Movie:

On October 14, 2008, Lionsgate, the home video distributor of quite a lot of low budget horror films, released a series of eight movies under the banner Ghost House Underground. The packaging of each disc included a clear plastic slipcover with the Ghost House Underground logo emblazoned on the right and a screaming skull underneath. It looked garish but admittedly kind of cool too. To be honest, these flicks seemed a lot like another round of After Dark Horrorfest movies (which Lionsgate also distributes).

It's now a year later, and Lionsgate has seen fit to resurrect this line (with its cool slipcovers intact) for a quartet of new releases due October 6, 2009 on both DVD and Blu-ray. Their website is located at http://ghosthouseunderground.com/ . Seventh Moon is one of the four titles to be made available this year.

Seventh Moon is the third feature-length film from Cuban-born director Eduardo Sanchez, whose first film project was the 1999 little-film-that-could The Blair Witch Project which he co-wrote and co-directed. Seventh Moon, arriving on home video a decade later, shows that Sanchez has not changed much in his approach to films. Shaky cam? Check. Young characters lost in the woods? Check. Obscenities? Check. Characters asking endless questions like "Who goes there?" or "What was that?" Check. Nighttime sequences where you can barely see a thing? Check.

And that's too bad. Seventh Moon's premise, from a story by Sanchez and Jamie Nash, offers a lot of promise. As some introductory text at the start of the film relates, there's a Chinese myth that the gates of hell open (hence the video box's tagline) and the dead rise on the seventh lunar month during a full moon. Newlyweds Yul (Tim Chiou) and Melissa (Amy Smart from Mirrors) are about to discover this firsthand. They're in China to meet Yul's parents. Melissa's a bit nervous about whether Yul's family will approve of her, as she's Caucasian (and American to boot), but these worries fall out of her mind as they and their driver Ping (Dennis Chan) become lost in the Chinese wilderness in the middle of the night. Mayhem quickly ensues as Melissa and Yul have to repeatedly fend off and flee from rampaging "pale figures," as they're described in the DVD's extras.

Sanchez and Nash's script is well-paced, and Seventh Moon was filmed in and around Hong Kong - which gives it an air of authenticity. I give credit to Sanchez and Nash for providing an explanation to the goings-on. Some filmmakers may have gone down the road of frustrating the viewer without one. The score by Antonio Cora and Kent Sparling, it should also be stated, is evocative and well-utilized.

However, Sanchez has the movie filmed in an obnoxious shaky cam format that I found baffling. Unlike The Blair Witch Project or others of its ilk, this isn't a "lost footage"-style movie. So why does the audience have to be subjected to constant nauseating herky-jerky film movements? Compounding this problem are some hyperactive editing and scantily-lit night sequences that, as a viewer, kept me from connecting with the tension of the script's narrative.

Seventh Moon was a movie that I wanted to like more than I did. It's another movie that mistakes shaky cam for style (the "shaky cam" can be effective, but it seems more difficult for filmmakers to master than one would think). It has some frightening moments and a great horror film concept - but its faults outweigh these strengths. Rent it, if you're curious.

The DVD

Video:

Lionsgate gives Seventh Moon an anamorphic widescreen presentation with a 1.78:1 aspect ratio. Colors seemed strong in the opening sequence, but much of this movie occurs in barely-lit nighttime, and these scenes evidence strong grain.

Sound:

The sole audio track is an English language Dolby Digital 5.1 affair - with the occasional subtitle for Chinese / Cantonese dialogue. Dialogue was always clear. The mix comes across nicely, especially ambient nighttime outdoors noise and the score.

Optional subtitles are available in English and Spanish.

Extras:

Ads for the original Ghost House Underground titles and the website Break.com, as well as trailers for The Children, The Thaw, and Offspring, precede the main menu. They're available collectively in an Also From Lionsgate link in the Special Features submenu, which also sports a separate link for a trailer of Seventh Moon.

More significant extras include a feature-length commentary track with writer / director Eduardo Sanchez and actress Amy Smart. A random sampling suggests the track is informative and relaxed in tone.

No fewer than three featurettes exploring the mythology and making of Seventh Moon are included: Ghosts of Hong Kong: The Making of Seventh Moon (11:44), The Pale Figures (5:20), and Mysteries of the Seventh Lunar Month (7:37). Most interesting of the three was probably The Pale Figures since they're arguably the centerpiece of the movie.

Folks with a DVD-Rom drive, it should be stated, can access additional extras online.

Finally, a rather lame extra called Ghost House Micro Videos (2:54) offers trailer footage from these new Ghost House Underground titles set to the music of heavy metal bands. Yawn.

Final Thoughts:

Seventh Moon has a great horror film premise and some frightening moments, but it's let down by too many barely-lit nighttime sequences, hyperactive editing, and obnoxious overuse of the "shaky cam." Rent it, if you're curious.

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