Reaction & Review | Deathday (The Campus)

Welcome, one and all, to an all new Reaction & Review. Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I'm gonna be covering a horror movie from 2018. That movie is "Deathday". Or, if we're gonna go by the movie's original title, it's actually called "The Campus".

And right off the bat, I have to talk about the film's confusing title. See, when I initially did research on this movie by typing in the movie's title, the first thing that came out on Google's search results was for a completely different movie called "Happy Death Day", which was released a year prior to this film. And I was confused by this, because I had no idea if I had typed in the wrong title, or if this movie is just so obscure that even Google's search engine doesn't want to acknowledge this movie's existence.

So, upon doing further research about this movie's title, I was actually able to find it under it's real title, "The Campus". So, why does this movie have two different titles, you might wonder? Honestly...I don't know. Maybe the original title didn't sound interesting enough for it to be a seller. And as for the "Deathday" title, I wonder if they named it that way, as it if it was suppose to be some sort of mockbuster to "Happy Death Day". Now I've never seen "Happy Death Day", obviously, so while I can't comment on the quality of that movie, I have heard good things about that version of the movie. This thing, though...I haven't. In fact, thinking about it, just looking at the title and the premise itself, you would almost think that it could've been made by the Asylum. Well, surprisingly, no. This movie was put out by some studio I've never heard of called "Gas Money Pictures". I'm hoping that name is not gonna be a reflection of the quality of this movie, but I'm gonna withhold judgement on that until I actually start watching the movie for myself.

Now I briefly mentioned the premise when discussing the similarities between this movie and "Happy Death Day". And this was mostly the reason why I wanted to watch this movie. The premise is basically about our main character dying over and over again, and yet, somehow, she keeps getting resurrected to life every time she dies. And so she has to figure out how to break this curse in order to set herself free.

I'm gonna tell you, guys, that premise sounds really awesome. And I'm really hoping that this movie is gonna somehow deliver on that amazing premise. However, as I mentioned a moment ago, I have heard almost nothing positive about this movie. But still, I am gonna try to see if it will at least be decent. And the only way I'm gonna figure out as to whether or not this movie will be watchable at all, is if I shut up, and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "Deathday".....or "The Campus". God, that's still gonna take some time to getting use to.

11 minutes later

OK, guys, this movie's story hasn't really picked up yet, but something else is bothering me at the moment. Well, two things are bothering me, actually. One, Morgan's sister has quite possibly the fakest baby bump I have ever seen in any movie that features a pregnant lady. And two, the lighting in this movie is fucking obnoxious. Everything I'm seeing so far looks so fucking brightish yellow that it's almost distracting me from what's going on in this movie! I'm hoping, maybe, that it will tone this lighting down a bit as the movie progresses, but somehow, I doubt it actually will.

16 minutes later

Wait, so our main character, Morgan, just died. And she was brought back to life through some tablet that her father discovered at the beginning of the movie. And one of the symbols that we were shown had just vanished, thus is the reason why she came back to life. So...does that mean then that if she dies a few more times, the devil comes back to life...maybe...? I am fucking lost here, guys, this story is literally making NO sense whatsoever. I kinda want it to make sense sooner rather than later, but I'm not sure if it's even going to at this point.

7 minutes later

By the way, guys, do you know what else is bothering me? This fucking music! I know you guys can't hear it for obvious reasons, but most of it, so far, has been this lame-ass piano music! I get that it's trying to build tension, which there isn't any so far, but it's beginning to sound tiresome real quick. And the sooner that this music ends, the better off I'll fucking be, because this movie's score has been dogshit, so far.

3 minutes later

O...K, well, I never thought I'd see an eyeball just dangling out of someone's face like that. I will say, at the very least, that the special effects here look decent for low budget standards. Not great, mind you, but still, at least they look decent.

18 minutes later

Remember when I said earlier, guys, that the special effects in this thing looked decent? Well, I'm gonna have to rescind that statement a bit, because I've been seeing these shots of this skeletal ghost creature wrapped in bandages, and the effects for it look like complete shit. Guys, I cannot wait for this stupid thing to fucking end, and I still got another half an hour of this crap to sit through! This is gonna be painful, guys...

The Review

Wow, that ending was...complete and utter horseshit. Well, guys, that was "Deathday", or "The Campus", or whatever. No matter what title you prefer, this movie sucks either way, so I'm gonna go ahead and shut this garbage off...OK. Jesus Christ, where the hell do I even begin...?! I'm speechless, guys, I really am. Because, how the hell do you take an awesome concept like this, and you make it into...whatever the hell I just watched for almost 85 minutes?! Dear God, this was just...ugh...

OK, you know what? I may as well just get into this review and try to vent as much as I can here. Let's start with the writing. So, like I just asked a moment ago, how do you take an awesome premise like this, where the main character gets killed off and brought back to life over and over again until she finds a way to break the curse and turn it into shit?! It by all rights should've been awesome, and it might've been done better in "Happy Death Day". Again, I don't know if that's the case or not, since I haven't seen it yet, but I'm probably gonna have to check it out at some point to see if it was done any better in that flick. But again, I'm not here to talk about that film, I'm gonna try to focus on this movie. So yeah, you had an awesome premise, and it turns into this fucking mess of a movie. And the worst part about that is that the movie is boring as shit! This movie clocks in at about 85 minutes, and it honestly feels like I was sitting there watching it for about 2 hours. I'm gonna tell you, guys, the pacing in this movie is shit from almost top to bottom. You would think that 85 minutes would be an easy watch to sit through, and yet this movie somehow makes it feel longer than it should've been, and by the point that I mentioned that I had another half an hour of film to go through, it was probably one of the longest, almost, 30 minutes I ever sat through watching a fucking movie! It really is that tiresome, and it will bore you to sleep as you sit there attempting to watch this horrendous thing.

Now, I would love to tell you that this story actually had some promise, and it honestly kinda started off promising. Because it started off with a prologue somewhere in Peru in 1991, where 3 guys were in the desert searching for some treasure or something. I don't know, maybe they were archaeologists or something, the movie's not entirely clear on that. But anyway, Morgan's father is one of these archaeologists, as he and someone else discovers some ancient ruins in a cave where there's an arrow present and the guy explains to Morgan's father, according to the writing on the ruins, that once the devil has all 5 pieces of something, which is later to be revealed as someone's soul, then they get their soul...I guess. Again, it's very vague, but the opening still had promise. And because Morgan's father was corrupt with greed, he decided to take it, thus unleashing the devil, who kills the one guy that was with him in the cave, while the other guy was sitting outside in the desert waiting for them. I'm gonna talk about him later when I get to acting. So after Morgan's father ends up making a deal with the devil, it cuts to the current year of 2018, where Morgan and her sister are paying tribute to their late father. Although, Morgan doesn't really have that much of relationship with her father anyways, which makes her sister come off as an angry bitch about it, and none of it has any real tension because there's honestly not very much depth between these two characters after that, since we never see Morgan's sister again after that scene with them ends.

In fact, let's actually try to get into the characters, shall we? And the best way I can summarize this is by saying that there are no characters here that are worth caring about. Hell, I could even go so far as to say that there were no characters at all to speak of in this film! I'm serious, guys, I'm very tempted to say that characters in this movie don't even exist! And if they did, then they're not very likable, because there's no depth to any of these characters whatsoever. Which brings me back more into our story, because most of the story here is basically Morgan getting killed and being brought back to life, thanks to this curse that was passed onto her by her father after he dies. And it's up to her to try and break the curse by getting this arrow and doing something with it that I won't try to spoil here. But going back to these *characters*, like I said, we mostly just follow Morgan through her trials, and she really goes through no real arc for her character, because it doesn't really change throughout the film. Most of the story is told through flashbacks, and even then, these flashbacks don't really offer much of a story. The most I could get out of it was that she was mostly neglected by her father in favor of her little sister, and there's this guy who says that he'll take the burden off Morgan's father, to which Morgan's father denies. Which I didn't understand what at the time, until it's all revealed towards the end by her father, who basically admitted in a recording that because of his deal with the devil, he had to sacrifice something that he cherished most, which was Morgan, thus the neglect, and admits that he always loved her. But you really don't feel anything out of it, because Morgan has no character to speak of, and thus she comes off as flat and fucking lifeless. Her father is no better either, mind you, but still, we're suppose to be following Morgan as she tries to get to the arrow that will help her break this curse, and you really don't care about her struggles because her character has absolutely nothing to go for!

Speaking of which, I want to bring up these trials. As I mentioned before already, in order for the devil to get Morgan's soul, she has to die at least 5 times in order for him to get it. And these methods of the events she goes through don't really make much sense. The first time she dies, she gets killed by these people wearing these really ugly-looking masks. The second time...honestly, I don't really fucking remember what exactly happened, other than the fact that her eye was dangling from her face, which again, looked really awesome, but I'll save that for when I get to special effects. The third time she gets revived is when everything is backwards for...some reason. And by backwards, I mean that everything looks inverted, from words, to how the place looks, is all done backwards. It's really stupid, and doesn't really make much sense. The fourth time she gets brought back, she's going through a stereotypical zombie outbreak, which is where the film REALLY started to drag, because this particular segment goes on for WAY too fucking long. And this movie is proof positive that I am SICK and TIRED of zombies. There was no need to include zombies in this movie, and it seems like the filmmakers *really* wanted to capitalize on the zombie fad that was already starting to die off by this point. But whatever, she dies by zombies, and by the fifth time she gets brought back to life, she has her one on one showdown with the devil coming to claim her soul. I won't spoil any further than that, but trust me, by the end of the movie, it makes even less sense what with it's horrendous ending and all.

Now I mentioned that these trials that she goes through each times she dies doesn't really make much sense. I say this, because the symbols that were on the ancient tablet before each one disappears doesn't really resemble anything related to how Morgan is suppose to die. Like, how exactly by the fourth time she gets resurrected was a symbol suppose to hint that she was going to go through some tired zombie apocalypse? Or by the third time, everything is suppose to be backwards? Or the first time is because some guys in ugly-looking masks are suppose to be killing our main lead? Like, how is ANY of this suppose to resemble the symbols that were on the tablet? I don't know. Maybe there's some deep connection there that I didn't pick up on, but none of it made any sense, and it's just more problems I can add onto this horrendous writing. So yeah, I guess it goes without saying that the writing in this movie is fucking horrible, what with it's *characters* and story that don't really add up to anything worth caring about.

On top of all that, we have the acting to get through. Now I didn't mention this beforehand, but one of the other reasons why I wanted to watch this movie was because of one particular actor's credit that caught my attention. You see, one of the actors that is in this movie goes by the name of Scott Menville. For those of you who don't know, he is mostly known for his voice work as Robin from "Teen Titans" and "Teen Titans Go!", along with my personal favorite role as Lloyd Irving from Tales of Symphonia, which happens to be one of my favorite games of all time. But anyway, he's actually in this movie, and I was curious to see what kind of role he was going to play here. Well...shockingly, he only has about 4 or 5 lines of dialogue in this movie, and it all sounds incredibly wooden. Which is kinda sad, considering the guy does some really good voice work. But when you ask him to be in a live action setting, apparently, he couldn't be asked to put in very much effort, and got an easy paycheck out of what little he was given to do in this movie. And it's not just him that sounds wooden, the entire cast in this movie also phoned it in, and thus nobody cared about putting in an effort to try and make this movie less of a chore for the viewer to sit through. So yeah, the acting here is terrible from just about everyone in this cast.

Special effects in this movie are kind of a mixed bag. I will say the makeup effects on our actress, whenever she's going through terrible pain look pretty decent. The best effect, of course, going to the dangling eyeball that's hanging from her face. That honestly looked great. Blood effects are OK, I guess. It's pretty cheap-looking blood, but at least it's better than using CG blood, which would've looked worse if the filmmakers even attempted that. Speaking of CG, I can easily say that the CG here looks terrible. I mentioned earlier about some CG skeletal ghost that has white bandages wrapped around it as if it were a mummy, and the CG on it looks like the cheap shit that you would see out of a horror movie from the 70's and 80's. At least there, those effects had some kind of charm of looking laughably bad. Here, it just looks like shit. And as for everything else involving CG, it also looks like shit, and I mean it looks like shit even for the standards of ultra low budget movies.

Camerawork here is decent for what it is. The lighting, however...oh fuck me dead, the lighting in this movie...! Guys, it's not often I ever mention lighting in a movie, but if you ever want to see it being used in such an obnoxious way, look no further than this movie. Because for about 85% to 90% of the film, there is this REALLY brightly tinted yellow that takes up a good portion of this movie. It doesn't matter whether it's filmed outside or inside, this kind of lighting rears it's ugly head and it is just distracting as all hell! And at times, it gets even *more* obnoxious, because in some scenes, whenever Morgan has to open a door to another room, the lighting will brighten itself so much to a point where I thought a bulb was gonna fucking burst at anytime! The only moments where lighting doesn't become an issue is when there is darkness involved. But even then, before all that, the film itself looks ugly as shit, because almost every scene seems to be tainted with this horrible yellow lighting, even in scenes that don't seem to be as brightly lit, and it's so distracting that you're probably not gonna end up caring about whatever scene is currently going on and instead focus on how unnecessarily bright everything seems. And even during the final act where Morgan has to face off against the devil, there's this brightly red lighting that comes in, which I guess was suppose to resemble hell or something evil, but again, it all comes off as just annoyingly distracting! I have no idea who the hell was in charge of this lighting, but they went WAY overboard with this kind of shit. It's one thing to be stylistic with how your movie should look, and then there's shit like this, where it does nothing but bother the viewer to an unnecessary extreme. And the lazy retards who were in charge of the lighting couldn't have been asked to tone a lot of this shit down! You're not aiming to look "artsy", you're making a fucking horror movie for fuck's sake!

So anyway, beyond the horrible lighting, the sound-mix here is mixed fine. The music here is shit, though. Oh yes, guys, we have terrible music. How, you may ask? Well, I brought it up way early on, but the music here is mostly just piano music. And it's not even good piano music at that, because most of the tunes that they play here consists of the same 3 or 4 notes each time that *dramatic* tension plays. Which again, there is no tension to be had here in this movie. And to be honest with you, guys, this kind of music sounds like it may have came from a Casio keyboard. Not only that, but it's also the same kind of shitty music you would hear while playing a free computer game online where it has the same kind of tune that plays over and over again on a loop and it just does not stop! That's the kind of shit you will hear from this movie, and if that's your thing, you're probably gonna love this movie's shitty score. But anyone with actual tastes in music are gonna loathe this kind of shit, because none of it is limited to a fucking Casio keyboard.

So...with all this in mind, guys, am I able to recommend "Deathday"/"The Campus"? Fuck no! This shit is torturous to get through. It feels so god damn long to where it becomes boring as shit. Perhaps maybe if you wanted to watching something that resembles a sleeping pill, then by all means, go ahead and watch this and you're guaranteed to fall asleep because nothing of interest actually happens. But if you have some level of standard for your horror movies, then you should avoid this thing at all costs. This thing almost borders on being unwatchable, what with it's god-awful lighting, atrocious music, terrible acting, and it's horrible execution of an awesome premise that turned to shit. Now I'm probably still gonna still check out the supposed better version of this movie at some point. But as of right now, I really have to watch something else to get this movie's awful taste out of my mouth. I'm probably gonna watch a better horror movie. I think I'll just pop in the first "Wishmaster" movie or something, I don't know. At this point, ANYTHING is better than wasting time on this piece of shit, and the sooner that I trade this thing in, the better off I will never have to look at it ever again.

Holy shit, um...guys, I have not been this pissed about a movie in a long time. It's rare that it happens, but hey, movies like this can certainly bring out the worst in me. But hey, that's what you get sometimes whenever I watch a really bad movie. So anyway, guys, with that, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all later. Peace.