19 DOORS (2011)

Just because you can make a movie, doesn't mean you should. Case in point: this so-called “horror” film, made in Pittsburgh on a budget of $25,000.

The storyline: a producer suggests that screenwriter Grace Mitchell (Natalie Bail), who's having a dry spell, try to get her creative juices flowing by temporarily moving to the Lyndora, an old hotel known for its rough, seedy past. The Lyndora closed its doors 50 years ago after a grisly series of murders occurred there. Local lore, of course, claims the place is haunted. Soon after Grace moves in, disturbing and inexplicable events begin to happen. Or are they merely figments of Grace's increasingly fevered imagination? 

OK, so it's far from an original idea. (Do I even have to mention The Shining?) Still, in the right hands, it could have made for a decent film. But 19 Doors doesn't come within skeet-shooting distance of that.

First there's the screenplay, rife with cliched, stilted dialogue. Then there's the acting. The entire cast is wooden, but Natalie Bail in particular recites her lines with the aplomb of a fifth-grader delivering a book report. There's one scene in which Grace stands near a doorway, going over some papers, when a ghost suddenly appears. Grace reacts by gasping, dropping her papers, and calmly bending over to pick them up. I've never seen a ghost, but I'm thinking if I did, I'd probably emit a frightened scream and run like hell. At the end of the film, when Grace has gone completely insane and commits a gory murder, she just kind of sits there on top of the corpse, not bothering to scream or recoil in horror. I've heard of understated acting, but come on already!

There's another scene in which the ghost of a murdered little girl appears to Grace. Throughout it, the child actress clearly suppresses the urge to giggle. Then there's Father Pat, the drunken priest who hangs out in the barroom below the abandoned hotel. He comes across as the stereotype of a lecherous clergyman who the church keeps moving from town to town because he can't stop buggering altar boys. It doesn't say much for Grace that she turns to this greasy old creep for spiritual guidance. And Ina Block, who plays Psychic Helga (yes, that's the character's name), is jaw-droppingly awful.

Also worth noting: Though the Lyndora has been abandoned for 50 years, Grace finds an old Ouija board without a single speck of dust on it. The same is true of the rotary-dial phone in Grace's room.

Unless you have a relative or a close friend who appeared in 19 Doors, there is no reason to sit through this back-alley abortion of a film.