Reviewed by
Christopher Armstead
100 or so years ago, some guy was in his palatial estate doing his girlfriend. That’s cool and all, but damn dude… your wife is right downstairs, your mother in law is putzing around in her wheel chair in the hallway and your daughters are sleeping in the next room. And when his wife complains about it he slaps the spit out her mouth. Now’s there’s a guy that’s in charge of his household, right? Right? I forgot to mention his son who has a knife and will proceed to kill everyone. Why? Hell if I know. He’s evil I guess. I also don’t know what the title of this movie ‘Seven Below’ means, but then you can fill the Atlantic Ocean with stuff I don’t know so that’s not really saying anything.
Fast forward to the present day where we meet some people riding in a van. Where did they come from and where are they going? This we don’t know, but let’s meet them anyway. There’s McCormick (Val Kilmer) the professional asshole and his neglected wife Brooklyn (Bonnie Summerville), there’s brothers Isaac (Luke Goss) and Adam (Matt Barr) who are getting away to mourn the death of their mom, and there’s Dr. Lipski (Christian Baha) and we have no clue why he’s in this van that’s heading to nowhere in particular. Eventually they’re going to stumble upon hot Stop and Go clerk Courtney (Rebecca Da Costa) who will eventually be joining them in their night of terror.
So they’re driving the van, the van crashes, the driver dies and Jack (Ving Rhames) shows up. Jack says they need to come with him where it’s safe because they can’t travel in this storm. It looks crystal clear to me, but who am I to argue with Jack? They make it back to Jack’s house, the same house where the little boy stabbed up those people 100 years ago, and they get comfy. First McCormick starts to trip out, hearing voices and not trusting Jack. He also bumped his head in the crash and has to lay down for a while. Val Kilmer’s contribution to this film is pretty much done. Also, Courtney the Stop and Go clerk will be brought to the house by Adam because Courtney, who works at a gas station, ran out of gas. We appreciate that they made fun of this and the ridiculousness of Courtney looking under the hood of her car since she herself has determined she’s ran out of gas.
Now everybody who needs to be at the house is at the house, and the freaky stuff can start to happen like the little boy appearing in mirrors, little dead girls grabbing peoples legs and dead wives in white materializing out of nowhere. What’s going on?
Well, something is going on since our guests are starting to turn up dead, all with Jack smoking a stogie with a sly smile on his face. We knew there was something wrong with Jack, we just don’t know what. Seriously, Jack explained it all to me, in what I think was explicit detail, and I still don’t know what was going on in this movie. What’s up with that?
For starters, allow us to laud the brilliance of Val Kilmer in this movie. He had a couple of lines in the beginning, then they laid him down in the bed where he did the majority of his ‘acting’ in this movie, and then they quickly killed him off. Brilliant. Also, after they killed him they had two characters cart his sheeted body off to the barn. As if two people who aren’t former Mr. Olympians could carry Val Kilmer anywhere. Totally unbelievable. Also, apparently he died by someone choking him with their hands. And I think it was a woman. Could a woman, or anybody outside of LeBron James actually wrap their hands around Val’s neck? What’s thicker? Val’s neck or Ving Rhames Skull? I don’t know. Hey, we love Val, but we gotta be honest and let you know that Val has been giving poor effort in even worst product lately.
Sadly, director Kevin Carraway’s ‘Seven Below’ is more bad product. Hopes for this one were higher than usual, mainly because of the cast. Not so much for Val because Val long ago has let us know that he’s stopped giving a f@#k, but more so due to the inclusion of Ving Rhames and Luke Goss who usually give great effort in whatever they are in. Even the lesser known actors such Matt Barr and Bonnie Summerville gave us hope, but all of these fine actors are trapped in a story, at least as far as my limited vision can see, that was going nowhere. I’m guessing this was a ghost story of some sort, with the dead people floating around and stuff, though they weren’t really doing anything, but as the film droned on I’m not sure what this was supposed to be. The sound effects were impressive with all of the orchestra hits and thunder crashes and sudden orchestral cues, but rarely were they used in conjunction with anything that I found remotely frightening. It just became annoying after a while.
Eventually we’re just waiting for the end of the movie so that Ving Rhames character can finally explain to us who he really is what the hell is going on, and he does just that… but rare is the movie where the Explaining Dude speaks so many words yet leaves us more confused than before he first opened his mouth. What the hell was this cat talking about? Then after Jack finally shuts up, some more weirdness happens which I can’t come close to fleshing out or explaining.
‘Seven Below’ had a solid cast and it did have a really good atmosphere, but it was saddled by a snail slow story that was either trying to be too clever for its own good, or was too clever for my limited comprehension abilities. One or the other.
