Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Marc Klasfeld
Starring: Jake Manley, Adeline Rudolph, Francesca Reale, Shane Paul McGhie, Kai Caster, Javier Botet, Nicholas Hamilton
YouTube has propelled the phenomenon of urban explorers into the mainstream over the past couple of decades. The video sharing platform is littered with channels in which YouTubers tiptoe around abandoned hotels, factories and shopping malls, trying not to succumb to asbestos poisoning. Horror filmmakers quickly jumped on this trend, with numerous low budget productions featuring urban explorer protagonists running into supernatural terrors in their quest for great content.
Most of these movies are barely more entertaining than the real thing. They tend to pad out their run time with endless scenes of characters trudging through a poorly lit location, occasionally exclaiming things like "Wait, did you hear that?" and "Guys, I don't think we're alone!" Many of them adopt the found footage format, which helps to excuse their low budget deficiencies.
Do Not Enter could probably have benefitted from a found footage approach. It features a bunch of urban explorers livestreaming their antics, but the movie is clueless about how modern social media (or even electricity for that matter) works. Adapted from a novel by 'First Blood' author David Morrell, the film opens with "The Creepers," a young quartet of urban explorers, staging a daring expedition into the bowels of the NYC subway system in search of a rumoured piece of undiscovered Basquiat graffiti. This involves them having to leap from a speeding train to reach their destination, and the rest of the movie never comes close to such adrenalised thrills.
Instead we follow the Creepers as they head to the Paragon, a long abandoned hotel which legend says houses a fortune in cash hidden away by the real life mobster Meyer Lansky. I'm pretty sure the FBI and IRS would have nabbed any such treasure long ago, but the group truck on regardless. They're joined by Frank (Laurence O'Fuarain, struggling to hide his Irish accent), who claims to be a reporter for Vice, but who obviously has ulterior motives.
Many of these single location horror movies are little more than modern updates on the Poverty Row b-movies of the 1930s, and when a trio of gun-wielding criminals arrive on the scene we're only short of Willie Best blubbering while a pair of eyes gazes through a suit of armour. There's a meta joke about the central gang's resemblance to Scooby Doo's Mystery Inc, but they can only wish they had the charisma of their animated forebears. The four young actors are likeable enough but the script never makes us feel like we're watching a genuine group of friends with a relatable rapport.
Once you see the name of Javier Botet in the opening credits you know exactly what sort of creature our heroes are set to come up against. The creature design here is especially generic, and the movie devolves into a Descent knockoff, but the budget could only stretch to a single monster. The movie is light on gore, mostly because it's so dark you can't see the bloodshed clearly, and the kills are lacking in creativity. There's a truly awful character played by Nicholas Hamilton, but the movie doesn't give him anything close to the sort of gruesome demise we're wishing for.
After what felt like an entire afternoon watching this bunch stroll through dimly lit corridors I checked my watch and a full hour of the 90 minute run time had passed before the creature shows up. It doesn't get much better from there, but there is a mildly effective sequence involving an elevator shaft; however, it's so poorly lit that it's difficult to figure out just what we're looking at. The movie never explains why the hotel is shrouded in darkness and yet there's a CCTV control room that is still fully active, despite the building having been abandoned well before the invention of such technology. Such nonsense might have been more easily overlooked if Do Not Enter offered enough thrills to keep us distracted, but this urban exploring is so boring you'll end up snoring; this movie is worthy of ignoring.
Do Not Enter is on UK/ROI VOD from April 6th.
