[Death By Engagement]
Plot:Two police detectives try to track down a vicious serial killer bent on reclaiming his mother's family heirloom wedding ring as it passes from bride to bride with the killer always one step behind, and the detectives one step behind the killer.
Cast:
Sascha Knopf,
Aaron MacPherson,
Iyari Limon,
P.J. Soles,
Christa Campbell,
Ryan Hansen,
Jeffrey Vincent Parise,
Edie Dearing,
Jilon Ghai,
Brandon Largent,
Brian Wade,
Maggie Myatt,
Terry Rhoads,
Julian Berlin,
Jodie Tate.
My Thoughts:Death by Movie.
Review:"Death By Engagement" operates off of the premise of a cursed engagement ring that everytime it's passed on to a new wearer, the angry spirit of the previous wearers abusive boyfriend shows up to kill the wearer and their significant other. No...I'm not kidding. This all starts when a woman runs out on her wedding, egged on by her best friend who wants her to get away from her psychotic fiancee who has a violent temper. While at a redlight, he smashes through the car window and beats the woman and her friend to death before cops kill him in a hail of gunfire.
The cop who fired the fatal shots then decides to steal the dead woman's wedding ring to give to his fiancee, and thus the curse begins. The ring bounces from person to person, and as it does the body count rises. Now two detectives have to solve the case before it's too late. One of the many lessons to learn from this movie is not to rob the dead, which of course most people (or anyone with morals) have learned ages ago. But "Death By Engagement" has so many other stupid things about it it's incredible.
The film for starters has some of the worst acting I've ever seen. I didn't know if I ws watching an indie horror or a low budget porn flick. Then again...it could've been that along with the bad acting, almost every woman in the film looked like a porn star. The plot is nothing to be help up and praised either. WHich is a shame considering I was really excited about seeing how this picture would play out. I was expecting something quite special, but instead "Death By Engagement" was a golden opportunity wasted. Seeing numerous couples picked off by some psycho in normal streetwalker clothing, wearing a clear-see-through mask is not exciting, or is it entertaining.
Add to that the fact that the film just goes on and on with this ring magically being passed from one set of victims to the next, without any rational explanation behind it whatsoever. The film does eventually get around to explaining that, but of course that's held for late in act three. I guess they needed a legit reason for the viewer to stick around past act 1. Being that "Death By Engagement" is a slasher film of sorts, you'd think that the writer would atleast put some sort of effort into the death sequences, but even those are bland, boring, and uninspired.
I've never seen such plain and effortless death scenes. No creativity or imagination is put forward for the demises in this film whatsoever. Then there's the fact that some of them are even cut away from once they get gory. The characters good and bad are also uninteresting to watch and are really poorly developed. If there's anything intriguing about this film in the least...it's that it plays on the battle of the sexes thing, and the male/female dynamics in a comedic yet realistic way.
However, this part of the films plot arc doesn't end up working out all too well because the arguements are all the same and are mostly full of things that most of us have seen and heard before. Reasons why men don't understand women, and the latter...stuff that if you've been around enough women you'd already know by now. While it was a smart idea to to try and implement such things into the script, it could've been tackled with more orginality. "Death By Engagement" is a really wasted opportunity, turning something with potential to be original into a sloppy, cliched, and ultimately boring mess.
Positives:Some good looking women.
Negatives:Boring script, boring characters, poorly written script, uncreative deaths, little to no entertainment value.
Overall:Waste of time...avoid!
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