Séance is a disappointingly mediocre supernatural horror film.
A college student thinks her dorm room is being haunted by the ghost of a little girl. Though her roommates think she is crazy, they decide to hold a seance during the Thanksgiving break in an attempt to get rid of the troublesome spirit. What they don't realize is that their seance can't bring back a ghost that is already present. Instead, they unwittingly resurrect the girl's psychopathic killer (Adrian Paul).
Writer-director Mark L. Smith wrote and directed Séance before he sold the script that would become the low-budget, effective thriller "Vacancy" starring Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale. With his debut, he has crafted a hit and miss little film that excels at creating interesting characters but is a big letdown when it comes to the execution of the actual plot elements.
The characters created by Smith are, at the surface, stereotypical protagonists for a horror film: college students comprising the "Final Girl" you know is destined to make it, the dumb blonde girl with a boyfriend who thinks about sex 24/7, the other friend who doesn't serve much purpose other than to potentially add to the body count, and the nerdy outcast with a crush on the Final Girl who may or may not become a hero before the story has been told in its entirety. Smith takes the stereotypes and gives them dialogue that is, for the most part, believable. The lines rarely sound forced and otherwise unrealistic and the acting is better than average for films of this nature.
That said, the film falters when it comes to delivering actual scares. The direction and musical score tell you that things are supposed to be getting scary but they never really do. Part of the problem is that Adrian Paul plays the killer with a modicum of interest. His performance is never very threatening. Instead, his supposed psychopath comes across as laughably pathetic most of the time. The plot also proceeds in such a generic fashion, complete with grainy flashbacks of the killer's misdeeds, that a horror fan can pretty much fill in the blanks of where the whole thing is headed from very early on. The film lacks the necessary pizazz to hold your interest outside, perhaps, of the characters,
In cases like this where the film is so utterly predictable, you may rightfully wonder: "I've seen this all done better before so what's the point?"
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