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A quartet of teens (Olaf Mathar, Babajide
Fadojutimi, Charlotte Rayner, Patricia Rybarczyk) decide to
spend a night of partying, sex and getting drunk and stoned at an
abandoned hotel - just to be undisturbed mainly. But when they somehow try
to piece together the history of the place from memory, one of them,
Nathan (Babajide
Fadojutimi), freaks out a bit: The hotel was run by a family
of torturers and serial killers who especially loved to take their moods
out on children. Nobody knows how many children they have killed because
not all of their bodies were found - and Nathan's little brother was
killed in the vicinity when the hotelowners still were "in
business". His body was never found, but he might just as well have
been one of their victims. The whole place is creepy from square one,
but at first our heroes still blame it on the history of the place, and
they decide to actually break into the hotel to check it out for kicks -
and even Nathan joins the others because he hopes for some closure. Bad
idea though, because there are ghosts inside, and they mercilessly kill
our lead quartet. Why you might ask? Because one of them, Michael
(Olaf Mathar), was actually the one member of the hotelowner family who
escaped justice - and he was by the way also the guy who killed Nathan's
brother. It seems though Michael has mended his ways since, has even
forgotten who he was, and does show some rudimentary remorse - but that
can't save him from the wrath of the ghosts ... In many ways, The
Innocent is a pretty fine film, it's totally atmospheric and features
some extremely creepy setpieces, and the locations - especially a weird
but wonderful sculpture park - are absolutely first rate. And still, The
Innocent is not the perfect film it almost ought to be, and at least
part of the blame is to be put on the very poor sound quality that at way
too many points makes the dialogue unintelligible, or the actors' weirdly
tinny voices at least destroy the carefully set up mood - which is a
shame, really. The other problem with the film is that its story doesn't
seem to be perfectly fleshed out. Now I'm for sure not one who wants to
have everything explained away, especially in supernatural horror movies,
but I'm sure I have been missing quite a few key points in this one. That
all said, the film is still rather creepy as it is - it just isn't the
film it could and should have been.
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