30 Nights of Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Even the title of this movie reeks of desperation; it's as if by listing a series of films, the filmmakers hoped people would feel they met the viewing pre-requisites by virtue of having seen one of them. It's only appropriate that when borrowing from the same formula the Wayans brothers rode to success with Scary Movie (before running it into the ground in its sequels), they also take the run-on title idea the brothers employed back on Don't Be A Menace To South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood. In the short documentary that serves as the disc's only bonus feature, it's hard to tell whether writer/director Craig Moss is entirely joking when he proudly declares the film to be "about nothing" for large stretches of time. Ostensibly a piece of found footage unearthed by some ladies in a storage locker on a reality show, the plot is a pastiche of Paranormal Activity, The Devil Inside and dumb bits and pieces from various other sources. After spending some time in a psychiatric hospital, Dana (Kathryn Fiore), with the help of her husband, Aaron (Flip Schultz), attempts to move into the house where her father (French Stewart) murdered the entire cast of The Artist during his exorcism. However, she is forced to contend with an evil spirit inhabiting the abode, a teenage step-daughter (Olivia Alexander) with an unhealthy infatuation for neighbour Abraham Lincoln (Ben Morrison) and an endless array of wildly unfunny jokes. To call the brand of comedy on display "broad" would be disrespectful to the comparative subtlety of Jerry Lewis or Leslie Nielsen. The gags simply don't stop coming either, an inundation of rapid-fire juvenile fart and pop culture jokes that land with a thud at a startling ratio. Somewhere buried underneath all of the terrible references and non-sequiturs are maybe one or two chuckles that weren't elicited without a fair amount of shame and guilt. The aforementioned documentary is an embarrassing artefact for all involved, as they bestow unwarranted hyperbole on Moss, insisting that he's "the funniest guy" when the movie he made clearly proves otherwise. Even French Stewart, an actor who possesses actual talent and here is relegated to a role that in better times he would surely have dismissed, has the gall to spew these baseless platitudes about how enjoyable the movie is.