Reel Advice From the Video Store Guy

Fallen Angels is a misnomer, folks. They should've dubbed this one "Fallin' Asleep."

Fallen Angels

DVD

*

cast:

Esme Eliot .... Nell Fisher

Michael Ironside .... Sheriff Ed Rooney

Kai Wiesinger .... Tom Craven

Dallas Campbell .... Brett Murray

Elly Fairman .... Natalie Lawrence

Emma Willis .... Laurie Campbell

Melissa Simonetti .... Melanie Fleischer

Jeff Fahey .... Dr. Richard Leighton

Mara Derwent .... Susan Cooper

rest of cast listed alphabetically

Tony Arunah Abbey .... Mick Schumann

Cassandra Bell .... Jade Bowman

Max Brown .... Brad

Directed by

Ian David Diaz

Writing credits

Julian Boote

Michael Derbas

R

97 Min

Every time Jeff Fahey stars in a cheap, poorly done piece of direct-to-video slop, an angel gets its wings.

Right now, by my count, there are about three angels in heaven still taking the bus to work.

You can tell right off that this one's going to be a doozy. We kick it off with a girl waiting on the side of a road in the countryside for a football player to show up. He then proceeds to give her a bunch of stories about why it took him so long, ending with the line, "you look good enough to DIE for!"

Before the audience can spit back an acerbic, "Oh, you WILL!", he takes three shots in the stomach from a trio of masked men.

Funny, though...their weapons look strangely like paintball guns. Anyone with a pause button on their DVD player will be able to see it fairly readily--just pause after 'Mr. Football Hero' takes his gutshots.

Surprise surprise...they ARE paintball guns! I've never seen paintball guns with muzzle flashes before, but anyway... Awful and awfully predictable jokes aside, we carry on with the plot, if this piece of inexcusable tripe can be called a plot. Basically, what's going on here is that a former professor at a Catholic girls' school is stalking one of the students, and it ends poorly - poorly, as in a school-consuming fireball. When an English documentary team comprised of one of the surviving girls goes back to investigate, Things Go Wrong once again.

Leading us to our first plot hole of the day: For an abandoned girls' school that just had a fireball race through its upper half, it looks really, REALLY well-maintained.

It's plain to see that the documentary crew is out to build the best performance it can at the cost of its participants. Meanwhile, a serial killer in a rain slicker is stalking the documentary crew and its participants.

I recommend bringing a book along if you watch this, because the first hour or so is a yawn big enough to cure insomnia. The last half-hour is a bit better because that's where all the "survival horror" events kick in, and even then it's slow and poorly done.

Frankly, the whole MOVIE is slow and poorly done. Jeff Fahey's incredibly lethargic performance watches as though it were on stilts, and the rest of the cast of assorted no-names is unbelievable and wholly unsympathetic.

While I'm at it, Michael Ironside, what the hell are you DOING in this picture?? You're a GOOD actor! Why are you wasting your time with slop that considers Jeff Fahey a big enough actor to get top billing?

This movie is not that much of a twist to begin with except for its sheer improbability.

Fallen Angels is pure and simple garbage - shovelreel at its very worst. It robs better movies with bigger budgets of plotlines (Fallen Angels is at its lowest terms really little more than a hybrid of Scream and Urban Legend with some minor alterations thrown in), and refuses to make anything new or interesting out of what it doesn't steal directly.

The 'extra features' menu is a perfect metaphor for the quality of the film, that is to say, there ARE no special features. No commentary or deleted scenes or filmographies - not even a subtitle or options for a change in audio quality.

So, all in all, Fallen Angels is just one more sad retread of films that were already a little tired when they were first released.

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