So I have been watching movies for a while now, as you may have guessed, but sometimes there will still come a movie that just flips my lid and blows my wig back. Sometimes there is a movie so ridiculous that I cannot help but stand up and applaud. My friends, The Entity is just such a film. Based on a supposedly factual case of a woman being terrorized and abused by malevolent spirits, this is a film that just should never have been. Or at least, not been this.
The Entity is a story about a single mother of three children who is trying to make her way in the world. She is putting herself through school so she can get a better career and better life for her family and herself. She’s young enough to dream but old enough to know better. Little does she know though that as she goes about her life there is an evil spirit that is watching her with lustful eyes. This comes to fruition one night while she is undressing and the spirit attacks and violently rapes her. She is traumatized and shocked and goes to the doctor (who I guess is a psychiatrist) to see if she was actually attacked or is simply going mad. Well, no sooner than she gets told that it’s probably all in her head she is attacked again and each time she fights it and each time the invisible force wins, and no matter what evidence she has to show, her doctor believes it is in her head. When the situation begins to effect her children and her friends, and just as it seems like it may turn deadly, she breaks off all dealings with her shrink and makes the acquaintances of some parapsychologist, who are conveniently shown some spooky business to convince them to help her. Needless to say there are more attempted attacks, there are some light shows, and there is lots of ‘oohi’ng and ‘aah’ing from the ghost hunters. This is their dream case. Evidence in hand, the ghost guys get the go ahead and come with a way to ‘trap’ the spirit and thus prove that there are beings outside of our realm. How this will help the woman is sketchy at best. Well, the gang gets their chance but things don’t go quite as they hope and unless she can face her attacker, the young mother may end up not only a victim but dead.
Holy crap this movie is silly. No way, and no how should a film depicting rape make you laugh but, and I am sorry to the woman who claims to have really gone through this, to see how they portray this stuff is RIDICULOUS! The woman is doing her thing, and suddenly BOWMP BOWMP BOWMP BOWMP and the attack happens. It is so exaggerated and violent and the music so dramatic that you can’t help but be dumbfounded. I am sure this was scary to the housewives of the eighties but, seriously, there are not rapist ghosts trolling for MILFs. Worse than those scenes though is the weird mix we get of ghost story AND psychodrama, so that every time we get a scary scene it is followed by a white coat telling us it’s all in her head. And it never matters who sees the stuff happen, it is always followed by ‘you’re crazy’. This may be how it really happened but in the film, it feels false. What ruins the film though is the ending, which for some reason someone felt the need to take a rocket over a shark tank and just blow the whole film. How do you come up with a notion to freeze a freaking ghost? HOW? And then when it goes down, the ghost 1.falls for their trap (a false version of her house set up in a college gym (YES, totally happens) and 2. that it decides to suddenly turn the tech against the woman. WHAT? Then after all that you have a ridiculous ending that proves that things are not as tidily handled as we had hoped, only to just ignore that fact. This is such a melodramatic, sloppy film that it embarrasses me that people are seeking this crap out on DVD only to find it is out of print. People want forty bucks and up for this nonsense. Good grief!
I appreciate that times have change but, my god, this is so silly that it’s nearly unwatchable. It does fulfill the needs of a ‘party’ film though and on that end, it’s fantastic.
Otherwise…
4 out of 10
The Spooky World of Chris Ringler 