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33%
Overall Rating
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Ranked #12,456
...out of 20,704 movies
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A group of Ghost Hunters discover a powerful force that puts one of their members in great danger.
--IMDb
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Ah, direct-to-video releases. Where would horror fans be without them? What's even better are the films that aren't solid enough to be released direct-to-video. I call these "The Lost Children". They are the horror films that just never an audience on the festival circuit; never found a distributor to take a chance; never found a spot on the Sci-Fi Channel line-up. "Marked" definitely falls into this category. You can't inherently call one of these films bad until you've seen it; maybe it just got swallowed up by the corporate machine. But, now, I have seen "Marked" and can tell you there is definitely a reason why you have not seen it already.
The storyline isn't too bad actually. Diella (Tara Carroll) was attacked and almost raped by a kid named Jake Matthews (Tony Suraci) but her father intervened and saved her but was killed in the process, also killing her attacker. Jake, however, 'marked' Diella and his ghost has been haunting her ever since. And, what better way to avoid paranormal entities that to start ghost-hunting professionally? She hooks up with her brother Mitch (Samuel Child) and an assortment of ghost-nuts and they travel around to various haunted spots trying to disprove their being haunted. Throw in a sub-plot about a fiendish professor (Mark Colson) who wants to resurrect Jake in order to complete some crazy cult ritual. Most of the film is scare-less and relies on building up to an ending that leaves you both disappointed and disoriented. What in the hell just happened?
I could almost see this film working. The script wasn't nearly as awful as you'd expect -- there were some nice exchanges of dialog here and there. And the whole premise with the Apophrica was interesting and could have been translated into something genuinely creepy. They even managed to do all right with the look of the creature and I thought -- "Wow, they could have made this into something iconic". Blame it on the budget, which appears to be less than the cost of a 10-piece McNugget meal. Had they had a $10,000,000 budget we might have been dealt something really memorable. Instead we get the same old tired characters doing the same old tired things and doing very little in the way of making logical decisions. Do any of these people look like they would be pursuing ghost-hunting for a living? No. And how in the hell do they make any money doing it?
There were some bright spots in the performances. Samuel Child has 'moments' of quirkiness as Mitch and then he descends into "Cary Elwes in Saw" territory a few times also. Mark Colson seems to enjoy being the villain in the piece but his blank stare is, at times, hysterical. Tara Carroll is just plain awful as the lead, which is really unfortunate; she has about as much talent for acting as I do for swaddling a porcupine. As for everyone else, the usual assortment of 'okay' actors doing their best to carry the material. But there is only so much you can do when most of the scares come from other characters watching videos of creepy things.
So I cannot recommend "Marked". It's not the worst thing I've ever seen and they definitely made something remotely watchable with a small budget so I give them props for that. But I was let down consistently and wasn't expecting very much to begin with. Just another 'lost child' looking for a home. 2/10.
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