Six childhood friends - Gina (Traci Lords), Brent (Frank Whaley), Jennifer (Dina Meyer), Beth (Gabrielle Anwar), Father Lyle Dey (George Newburn) and Wayne (played by the film's writer, Dan Deluca)- are reunited when they attend the funeral of an old acquaintance. When the funeral is done they get together to put the estate in order and when they discover an old map they decide to work together and find an old trunk that they hide in their younger days. When they follow the map to an old building where the trunk is hidden they find the remains of a dead child.

As they collectively begin to remember who the dead child is and what the significance of all of this is, strange start to happen to them and around them. Paranoia slowly sets in and repressed memories are soon unlocked resulting in a reckoning of sorts, where the six adults must come to terms with their own unorthodox upbringings.

Crazy Eights takes its sweet time to get going but once the action moves to the innards of the eerie orphanage, it picks up. The first thing you'll notice, once it does start moving, is how familiar much of the film feels. It borrows some pretty obvious elements quite heavily from Saw, Session Nine and, oddly enough, The Big Chill (to which the cover compares the film). This doesn't make it a bad film per se, but it does suck a lot of the originality out of the picture and there's definitely a sense of déjà vu which permeates the last half of the picture.

The performances in Crazy Eights are a little uneven. For every restrained and realistic performance, one of the other actors will go over the top and start chewing the scenery. Traci Lords, towards the end of the film, lays it on a little thick. Granted, her character is supposed to be losing it but she's not completely convincing here and all three of the male performers are guilty of the same thing. It's not quite high camp, but it teeters dangerously close in spots. Thankfully the overacting is sporadic rather than constant, so it doesn't render the film completely unwatchable by any stretch. Dina Meyer stands out, however, and delivers a very good turn as Jennifer.

What Crazy Eights does well is use its location effectively. The abandoned and aging building where the bulk of the film plays out is as important a character as any of the human actors in the film. The paint peels off the walls, stagnant water lays across the floor, soiled linen and clothes are stacked around haphazardly and the windows are all ominously painted shut - everything looks filthy, unclean, and appropriately sinister.

While the pacing could have been better and the film could have stood out from the herd a little more than it does, there's enough about Crazy Eights that works to make it worth a watch for those who enjoy slow burn horror. There isn't a lot of gore or sleaze but the plot is interesting and the twist towards the end feels appropriate rather than tacked on as an afterthought. The movie is well written and the cinematography is excellent.

Video:

Crazy Eights arrives on DVD in a 2.37.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer. There are some scenes that look a little on the soft side and there's a bit of (intentional?) grain that's quite noticeable in a few scenes but there aren't any problems with any serious print damage nor are there any obvious compression artifacts. A little bit of edge enhancement is apparent in a couple of spots but color reproduction is decent and the black levels stay solid throughout.