THE CONVENT

In 1960, a girl armed with a pump-action shotgun and equipped with a baseball bat and gasoline cans bursts into a convent and, after beating and injuring the priest and the nuns, sets the entire building on fire. 40 years later. The convent has now become a place of legends, and it often happens that the students from the adjacent university campus choose it as a place to perform daredevil stunts for freshmen. One night, seven young people decide to go to the convent to spend some hours of fun and to help one of them pass the daredevil stunt; however, in the same place, on the same night, four satanists, determined to summon the prince of darkness, perform a human sacrifice, thus unleashing the forces of evil. One by one, the reckless visitors of the convent will be possessed by evil, turning into bloodthirsty monsters. It's a strange feeling to watch "The Convent" knowing that the film was produced in 2000; it's a strange feeling because coming across this type of film in 2000 is a bit like finding a four-leaf clover in a thicket of hawthorns. Clearly old-style and with irreverent and semi-demented tones, "The Convent" explicitly refers to the splatter genre of the 1980s, re-proposing situations already seen (and loved) in now cult films like "The House," "Demons," and the lesser "Night of the Demons" and "The Knight of Evil." From the very beginning, the entire film is pervaded by an air of complacent amusement that, from the introduction set in the 1960s, already foreshadows a missed cult, a hypothesis then confirmed as the film progresses: every situation proposed inevitably reminds one of a situation already seen elsewhere, halfway between the declared homage and the need to draw from the past due to an obvious lack of ideas. The characters are all quite stupid and excessively two-dimensional, halfway between the stereotype and the parody of the same; unfortunately, even the key character of the film (the girl of the convent massacre, now grown up) is only roughly sketched, although, to the joy of fans, the role is played by a rejuvenated Adrienne Barbeau, unforgettable co-star of so much 1980s horror cinema like "The Fog" and "Creepshow." At this point, it's not clear whether to applaud Mike Mendez's work or to frown after watching it. The praiseworthy feat of highlighting the nostalgic aspect of the film is to be considered successful, thanks to a simple and at times effective story, the participation of an icon of the good cinema that was, and a massive dose of splatter scenes, which do not lack exploding heads, flayed faces, and a triumph of various liquids (with a possessed child who vomits pea puree!). Then a special applause goes to the makeup effects, capable of creating credible and frightening demons, original in the choice of ecclesiastical look. However, if the film is analyzed from an optic that goes beyond the simple excitement for the nostalgic aspect, then one encounters a series of evident limits, not so much technical (even if it is a low-budget film, the quality does not suffer too much, indeed, in addition to the already mentioned special effects, the particularly peculiar photography is to be admired, which prefers pop color tones that are often fluorescent), but above all content-related: a very thin story, unbelievable and excessively superficial characters, and an inexplicable haste in the creation of the final product. The film is on the border between the medium and the feature film (it barely reaches 70 minutes) and almost completely lacks an adequate final climax, resolving itself in a hasty manner, as if more than one scene had been omitted from the editing, an inexplicable choice, given the ridiculous duration of the film. Therefore, a fair evaluation of "The Convent" probably lies in the middle: a film especially for longtime enthusiasts that entertains and makes you smile, but also a very light film, not always well-made and in several points too hasty. If the work had been conducted with greater skill, we would have found ourselves in front of a new cult, instead we have an innocuous product for a summer late-night show. It definitely deserves half a pumpkin more.