The Attic Expeditions (2002)

Absolutely the worst movie.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Trevor Blackburn(Andras Jones)is an amnesiac told by his psychiatric doctor, brain specialist Dr. Ek(Jeffrey Combs as eccentric as ever)that he was an unhinged, hard-to-handle criminal who was behind the murder of his lover Faith(Beth Bates). Ek sends him to the House of Love, supposedly a mental recuperation center for others with insanity issues. Ek wishes for Trevor to regain his buried memories and place his confounding images into their proper context. What Trevor doesn't know is that Ek has cameras throughout the house, set up to study him. He has also planted actors in the house to pose as mental patients so to increase Trevor's mental collapse. What's sad is that Trevor is really nothing more than a lab animal for Ek's experimentation..tampering with his mind until he snaps. What Ek is really after is a book of magick for which Trevor only knows it's whereabouts. We also get a peek inside the madness within Trevor's mind where we see weird, often homicidal, images. We get visions of a reoccuring dream Travis has of an attic with a trunk. That trunk symbolically represents his mind..inside it is what has been locked away from him. The mystery of that book is really at the heart of this crazy little movie.Call it what you want. Wacky. Quirky. Colorful. Dizzying. Director Jeremy Kasten keeps the viewer on edge so we can experience the same hysteria like Trevor. The film even offers up the idea that Faith's being has came to life within Trevor's mind to get that book using someone in the House of Love as a host to kill him. Supposedly in that magick book is a key to immortality, but Trevor and Faith had to die together. But, you're never quite sure what is going on which is either part of the fun or agony depending on how much the viewer likes being pulled on the tail. Lots of B-actors here like Combs as the doctor, Ted Raimi as a writer who bares witness to Combs' madness and becomes threatened by him, Seth Green as "loony" Douglas who becomes a possible ally to Trevor.The film is really a visual marvel on such a low budget and a credit to imaginative filmmakers who really want to mind-screw you.

This is the type of film that some might say only becomes clear in the final minutes. I'd partially agree with that. A young man wakes from a 4 year long coma to discover that he murdered his fiancé and has been locked in a mental institution. His doctor, seeking to treat him, sends him to The House of Love for therapy. Once there he meets the other patients and is troubled by half realized memories and strange deja vu ... not to mention the murder of some of the other patients. I won't say any more than that plotwise. Andras Jones plays the lead, and I enjoyed his performance. I would have to admit that his acting is inconsistent throughout the film, but somehow, this makes his performance all the more endearing. The inconsistency seems to suit the storyline in a positive manner. Seth Green, who I strongly disliked before this film, has made me a fan. Beth Bates is, to be quite honest, pretty bad performance wise (though gorgeous in my humble opinion). In her defense, much of the little dialog she has, would be tough for even the most talented actress. All of the other actors do a good job. The score is wonderful, the type you'll remember after one viewing. The sets are nice, especially considering the budget, and the film is very well shot. You can probably find the DVD for 10 bucks. A real bargain in my opinion. This is the kind of film that you'll either love or hate. If you love it, you'll likely be left to ponder it for days. I said earlier that I would only partially agree with someone if they said that it only becomes clear in the end. It may become clear, but it raises more questions than an answer should. Bravo!

The Attic Expeditions starts with the revelation that Trevor Blackburn (Andras Jones) has murdered his fiancé Faith (Beth Bates). After a medical procedure went awry Trevor has been in a coma for the past four years in a sanatorium for the criminally insane run by the sinister Dr. Ek (Jeffrey Combs). Trevor regains consciousness & claims to remember nothing about Faith's death, Ek decides to try a little experiment out on Trevor & places him in the 'House of Love' run by Dr. Thalama (Wendy Robie), a sort of normal house environment for the insane to readjust to normal life or something like that. The other patients are the attractive Amy (Shannon Hart Cleary), Liz (Nancy Wolf), Doug (Seth Green) & Ronald (Jerry Hauck). At first things seem good but the very first night Trevor has a dream about going into the attic & finding a spooky old chest. The next day Trevor has an interesting & somewhat revealing conversation with Ronald who is murdered shortly after, Trevor has more dreams about Faith, operations & books about Black magic as he becomes more & more paranoid over who he can trust & just what the hell is going on...Directed by Jeremy Kasten this is one weird film, personally I really disliked it. The problem I have with The Attic Expeditions is the script by Rogan Russell Marshall which is an absolute incomprehensible mess. Nothing is this film is given any sort of closure, was it all a dream? A hallucination? Was it reality? Was half of it reality & half of it fantasy? I mean just what the hell was this film all about? Whats with the staircase hidden in a chest? Why does someone suddenly turn into a psycho killer? What with the book with blank pages? Whats with Dr. Ek? There are people who will like this sort of muddled plot & try to come up with lots of possibilities & theories which is fine I suppose but I like my films to have closure & come together rather than just end up all over the place. I can't stress enough just how much of a mess the narrative actually is, this film is all over the place & incredibly confusing. It likes to introduce twist & turn after twist & turn which in the end ties itself up in knots. I still don't have much of a clue about what happened & I'm not going to waste anymore of my life trying to figure it out. On a positive note at least it's original & tries to be different.Director Kasten must take a huge slice of the blame, the various plot threads just don't go anywhere & I'm at a loss to understand why he didn't try to tie the dreams, hallucinations & the reality together so it actually makes some kind of sense. What makes thing even worse is that there are some good ideas & I always felt there was a good film trying to break free of the muddled narrative. The gore is tame, a few splashes of blood & a (dream? reality? hallucination?) scene of Trevor with the top of his head sliced off & his brain exposed. There is some nice nudity too.With a relatively low budget of $1,000,000 The Attic Expeditions is a surprisingly well made film with really good cinematography, decent special effects, nice production values & it's well made. The acting is pretty good expect for Andras Jones the lead who was flat & bland. Horror genre favourite Jeffrey Combs deserves better than this.The Attic Expeditions is a mess of a film, I simply can't look at it any other way. I'm sure there are people who will like this & this is my own personal opinion but I really couldn't recommend this film to anyone, very disappointing.

Horror in the Attic Late night horror movie on the Horror Channel. It made a desperate stab at being a complex psychological horror, but ended up being boring and falling into the same trap as almost all modern horror films. There is no real atmosphere, it felt very phoney and just very typical. The complexity of it seemed just tacked on and was not very complex at all.I'd read it was a "thinking man's horror film" and in the vein of Lovecraft, but it was far from it. I found it rather simple and pointless. If you really were a "thinking man" then this isn't going to make you think, try "Jacob's Ladder". And for being like "Lovecraft", the man didn't fill his stories with sex and nudity, while this film has two sex scenes and more nudity. Just making vague references doesn't make it like something. If that were the case then here: "God" - now this post is like the Bible.Slightly above average horror movie, but better than most of today's American tripe.