'7 Below' DVD Review

A boring, generic haunted house tale that can only boast an above-average cast.

One stormy night in 1911, a young boy suddenly and coldly stabs his family to death. Why? Who knows. Cut to 100 years later, and a group of people on their way to (Or back from? Does it matter?) some sort of resort end up stranded in the middle of nowhere when a ghostly figure causes their van to crash. Lucky (not) for them, a friendly local named Jack (Ving Rhames) happens by and offers them a ride to his home, where they can ride out an impending storm.

Jack is weird, intuitively "knowing" details about his guests and offering one of the ladies an in appropriately fancy vintage white dress (which she, for some reason, accepts). But only when members of the party start to drop dead to they think that an escape plan might be necessary. Can they get out of harm's way before history repeats itself? Let's hope not.

With recognizable names like Ving Rhames and Val Kilmer (and to a lesser extent, Luke Goss), you'd think that 7 Below would have more to offer than the average direct-to-video haunted house fare. You'd be wrong. Cliché-ridden from start to finish, the script is not only unoriginal, but it's also slow, unscary and shallow. The characters are bland and dumb (There's a killer on the loose? Let's split up!), and the backstory of the ghosts is all but ignored. The "scares" are lazily conceived rehashes of scenes we've seen a million times before (the ghost in the mirror, the eye in the keyhole, etc.), as the film largely amounts to a bunch of talking with the occasional ghostly figure popping up and then vanishing.

The DVD

No special features.

Movie: D
DVD: F

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