Starring Jeffrey Combs, Angus Scrimm, Annie Sorrell, Brett Erickson Eliza Swenson, James Russo

Directed by Dan Golden

Here's yet another example of a horror movie being deceptively marketed by the distributors in order to sucker in genre fans. Jeffrey Combs is given top billing even though he plays a police detective with only two or three short scenes in the whole film. I doubt he's even in this thing for longer than five minutes tops. Angus Scrimm is also given a top billing even though his role as the real lead character's doctor is also a small supporting role. But at least he's in the movie longer than Combs and factors somewhat into the plot. I know this sort of deceptive marketing helps sell movies but it doesn't make it any less deceptive or justifiable.

The actual star of Satanic is Annie Sorrell, an actress best known for the naked shower scene she had alongside her equally naked real-life twin sister Alicia in Cruel Intentions 2. It was her only scene in that film. It was the only highlight of that film. Annie again finds her way into a fully naked shower scene in Satanic. It is also the only highlight of this film.

Satanic opens with a car accident. Actually, it opens post-car accident. Young Michelle crawls out of the wreckage alive; her father, not so alive. She next awakens in the hospital with her face bandaged up and no memory whatsoever. Doctor Tall Man (Angus Scrimms' resemblance to an unkempt William F. Buckley here is the only thing disturbing about the whole film) hopes to unclog her memory by giving her the only salvageable contents from the car she was riding in, which turns out to be as ominous looking a Ouija board as you're likely to ever see. This isn't a Ouija board like you'd find sold on toy store shelves next to board games like Candyland and Trivial Pursuit; this Ouija board looks like the devil's dartboard, complete with a pentagram shaped pointer. In addition to amnesia, she also starts having weird visions, flashbacks, and nightmares. The brain trauma seems to have also affected her speech since she seems to almost whisper most of her lines. On second thought, that might have just been an unfortunate case of bad acting, something this film is terminal with.

And an orderly at the hospital gets killed by an unseen assailant. But enough about that for awhile.

As Michelle has explained to her, her mom passed away years earlier, she didn't take to daddy moving on with his life, and so she tried to stick a knife in daddy's new girlfriend. Down the road to juvenile delinquency, she found herself sent off to a halfway house for troubled girls called Harmony House. Once unbandaged to reveal her pretty as ever face and released from the hospital, she's right back to Harmony House where's she is initially befuddled upon seeing her belongings: slutty black wardrobe, a slew of cheesy goth items that look to have been purchased from Spencer's Gifts, a jar of leeches, and the big black diary with a giant pentagram on the cover filled with all her angry scribblings, as well as a lot of witchcraft related stuff. As she reads the diary she comes to wonder if she was actually a really bad person before the accident.

Among the other denizens of Harmony House that Michelle has no memory of, there's the trampy best friend, the video game obsessed Beavis & Butthead duo (one of whom has the hots for her), the kindly man that runs the place, and his ball-busting, hate-filled, hyper religious battle axe of a wife. The wife is really into tough love discipline and spouting nonsense about the whore of Babylon or something along those lines. Imagine how she would feel if she knew her hubby liked to sit on the couch in the dead of night and light up while watching horrible direct-to-video slasher films. It would have been ironic if the movie he'd been watching on TV was this one.

Let's see; Michelle still has amnesia and therapy doesn't seem to be helping. What's a girl to do? Hey, why not try the big scary Ouija board to help unlock your memory? I hear holding a black mass is a great way to cure your hiccups too.

No sooner does she start fooling with the devil's mojo than a mystery slasher in a black cloak starts a killin'. The question becomes whether Michelle is actually evil and the trauma of the car wreck has altered her personality for the better but her evil side keeps trying to manifest itself or has she unwittingly unleashed some sort of evil by messing with the black magic. Maybe Doctor Tall Man will be able to help, or will Detective Herbert West crack the case first? Could that rambling vagrant know the truth? Hey, maybe the skinless burnt corpse and mystery person in the black cloak that haunts her visions might hold the answers? One thing is for certain; I couldn't care less and I seriously doubt anyone else watching Satanic will either. Hell, this thing is so dull and lifeless that I doubt even the actors involved gave a damn.

This is a nonsensical horror film with nothing to be scared of, a mystery with no suspense to it, and a whole lot of talking instead of action. Even the slayings won't satisfy slasher movie fans since most of them happen in a flash or off-camera entirely. Once the big silly final twist played out and the closing credits began to roll I just found myself sitting there and wondering why.

Why did this movie get made?

Why did anyone think this movie was worth making?

Why did people think it was worth investing their money to make?

Why did a name distributor like Lionsgate think it was worth releasing?

Why am I wasting my life writing reviews of lousy horror movies instead of making them?

Everyone reading this review right now should be asking themselves the same thing. Worthless junk like Satanic sure makes it seem a lot easier than it probably actually is.

1/2 STAR