Rating: 2/5
Fire and electricity crackle. Water fills the halls. A mass emerges from beneath—a body, long dead. Hands pull at chains that bind them to the water sprinkler system. A face appears in the reflection of the water—the lead singer of Bodybag, Sammy Mitchell. Rasping breath walks the hallway. Clawed hands emerge. The chained hands grab a blade to destroy the shackles. When that doesn’t work, one hand chops off the other.
Alex wakes up. The Devo score kicks in.
Cut to the following day. Alex leaves class with Jack and Marty. One reads in the newspaper about the US closing Alcatraz to tourists after the band Bodybag, who was touring the facilities, turned up dead and mangled. The tour guide discovered the lead singer in a cellblock, chained to the water sprinkler system.
But forget that! Alex and Jan have to grab burgers while Alex’s brother, Richard, and Richard’s girlfriend, Krista, fuck. Jan is trying her best, but Alex is distant and weird. He feels the wall flexing behind him. A clawed hand reaches through the wall. But when he looks behind him, nothing has happened.
Dreams and reality are blurring together for Alex. Are they premonitions? A warning? Thankfully, one of Alex’s teachers is an occultist who explains everything. What she can’t answer awaits him at Alcatraz.
Krista tries to get Jan to hook up with Alex, but Jan has major sapphic friend desire:
— How do I look? — Even the small percentage of male hormones in my body tingle just to be near you. — I hope Richard's do the same.
I wouldn’t say this movie has a promising start, but it at least has consistent nightmare moments. Once they arrive at Alcatraz, the energy peters out for most of the runtime. Like, when you throw in a montage of all the gore scenes thus far an hour into the movie, you know you’re struggling to keep the audience interested.
Tonil Basil does what she can, but this isn’t much of a movie.