It almost seems like yesterday, doesn’t it, when the phenom indie pic known as The Blair Witch Project made horror film headlines. One of that film’s writer-directors, Daniel Myrick, went on to be a co-founder of a WB direct to video horror film arm known as Raw Feed. The other half of that team, Eduardo Sánchez, has been somewhat AWOL…until now. After watching (or should I say, trying damn hard to watch) Sánchez’s third film, Seventh Moon, I’m starting to think Blair Witch was a fluke and those behind it are one trick ponies.

Or at least one half of the Blair Witch crew. It is rather curious that the DVD marketing of Moon makes almost no mention of that overrated cinema miracle from ten years ago. Instead, it invokes the name of The Evil Dead- only because the flick is “presented” by Sam Raimi and Robert Tapert’s Ghost House Underground banner. They have no other connection to the film. More importantly, see the cool looking zombie? Enjoy that and the film’s premise…while you can. In fact, there’s some good bonus features on the DVD that shows you what these pale, vampiric Chinese zombies look like and some general info on the legend of which the film gets the general premise from. As such, the story has lots of potential .
I repeat: enjoy it while you can, for if you watch the film itself, you’ll see very quickly that Sánchez hasn’t really grown as a filmmaker. As a couple (Amy Smart and Tim Chiou) are visiting China to meet with some relatives, they speculate with a guide (Dennis Chan) the meaning of the recent celebration regarding the myth of dead rising on the seventh lunar month during a full moon. They get lost at night, the guide goes missing, buildings appear locked up, and Yul and Melissa are stranded in an unknown part of China. That myth, of course, has something to it as pale skinned corpses run about the farmlands, devouring the ’sacrifices’ left for them, be it chickens, dogs, rabbits and of course, any pool soul caught outside. The horror buff in us anticipates good things to come. But as the film progresses, three things started to test me. Then they frustrated me. Then it was an annoyance. As these three things continued, more and more, I hated the film I was watching.

Ten years ago, the Blair Witch team lit faces with flashlights under the chin and highlighted surroundings with other flashlights. Ten years later, technolgy has advanced. The main light sources are not flashlights or a car’s headlights. The full moon itself does not light a path, instead, it’s… the light blue hue of a CELL PHONE. So the character(s) more or less see next to nothing unless an object, person or pale zombie is right in front of them. That goes double for the viewer. Ten years ago, Witch also had a lot of shaky hand held camerawork, but that was before the shakycam filmmaking fad took off. One decade later, the hand held camera shakes so much and has many tight shots, it is next to impossible to get a bearing on where the two main characters are half the time. It’s almost as if the person with the camera had to take a bathroom break and was holding it in agonizing pain. I know that’s a crass thing to say, but the damned thing looks so rushed an amatuer, either the cameraman was ready for a privy break or the dude was having heatstroke. Worse, unless the zombies are jumping around the car (lit by cell phone and interior car light) they are tough to get a glimpse of. All that makeup. All those dedicated extras. All for nothing. Then there’s that third thing.

I’m constantly puzzled as to why a newlywed couple who are so much in love can quickly turn on each other when faced with bigger problems and worse threats. I’m curious as to why, out of the blue, the bickering brings up race and culture differences. Granted, the lover’s spat is for only part of the movie, but when the film’s visual style gets on my nerves, then the characters themselves suck my blood dry, there’s only so much I can take. I almost gave up on this darned thing, then, abracadabra, while escaping the wrath of the demons, our couple stumble into a bright candle-lit temple in the middle of a graveyard, where the villagers are holding some sort of ritualistic vigil. The scene sticks out, for it is not just a place where I don’t have to squint to see what’s going on. It’s a place where the demon dead don’t eat anyone, much less mob rush anyone. Just when the eyes stop being challenged, Sánchez puts that jittery camera and his actors back outside, then in a weird cave, where it is not only tough telling one demon zombie from another, but why the characters never bump their heads. More low lighting. More shaky cam. More tight shots. More. More. More.

Enough.

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Seventh Moon
Directed By: Eduardo Sánchez
Starring: Amy Smart, Dennis Chan and Tim Chiou