Director: Chris Majors
Starring: Meredith Majors, Betsy Baker, Anne Leigh Cooper
Year: 2016
You may think you’ve seen painful acting before, but you have yet to meet Lake Eerie, a film that is as bizarre, awful, and unimaginative as its title. I’m not sure if my words can prepare you for such a film failure, an amateur attempt at something, I don’t know what, that could not possibility have resulted in what the filmmakers were aiming for. Because, if this is the movie that they were trying to make, someone needs to take away their cameras and put them under lock and key. I can only imagine that “haunted house story with Egyptian magic thrown in for good measure” sounded like a great idea, a script was written, and a film shot, all before anyone had the chance to think about the disastrous consequences. I don’t want to picture a world in which this movie was intentional.
The Movie
Kate has just moved from Iowa to Michigan, buying a house right on the shore of Lake Erie. Most of the inhabitants of the little town head south for the winter, the weather is so bad, but Kate has come seeking solitude, and that’s exactly what she’ll find. The house she moves into is a big old, dusty thing, having been unoccupied for decades. The man who lived there was an eccentric archeologist named Harrison, and the house was sold completely furnished, including his many treasures and unusual decorations. Kate finds the house to be lonely and a little frightening, as she struggles to move past a personal tragedy and to get on with the life she still has ahead of her.
But the house isn’t just creepy, it’s downright haunted, but not in the ordinary ghost-in-the-attic manner. It turns out, Harrison was obsessed with Egyptian legends, including the rituals surrounding the afterlife, a topic that he took much too seriously. He was looking for an amulet, which was said to have the power to send the wearer over to the in-between world, a place that acts as a prison for souls that are not allowed a quiet rest. Kate begins to encounter strange shapes and to experience odd dreams, all connected to Harrison and his attempts to reach that other world. Now she will have to try to save him, with the help of a fiery student named Autumn, before he is trapped there for good.
If you noticed that the pictures I chose to showcase the movie aren’t that interesting or helpful, that’s because there aren’t very many images of the film available. Well, unless you want pictures of the one time a naked woman walks out of the water with her butt and breasts on display, which you very likely might and I wouldn’t blame you for; it was the only remotely positive piece of what is otherwise an embarrassingly bad film. The naked woman is part of a greater and more confusing storyline in which the main character’s dead husband asks her to have sex with this buxom lady because he “likes to watch”, which has absolutely nothing to do with the plot of the movie, comes completely out of left field, and really encapsulates the entire project, a 100-minute WTF moment that you swear someone could not actually have thought would work.
And it didn’t, not in any way, crashing and burning in record fashion. I’ve seen the Sharknado movies so I know where the bottom is, but Lake Eerie gave those ghastly gems a run for their money. At least they are stupid on purpose, talentless by design, over-the-top because someone wanted them that way, enjoyable exactly because they are so terrible. This film can’t even be called a b-movie, it’s more like an f-movie, a student project done by adults that should have been scrapped the moment the first hideous scene was seen through a camera lens. I assume Chris and Meredith Majors are married, he directing while she wrote, they both appear in the story, they’re both stunt people, and neither of them should ever attempt to make a movie ever again. Even Lance Henriksen couldn’t save the day, and you know that means trouble. The plot was insane, the acting god-awful, I could feel my brain withering from the very start, and I wish I could go back in time to unsee what I just watched.
The DVD
Video – Information on the aspect ratio and other video details for this film are unavailable, which is absolutely fine, given that the picture was as poor as you’d expect from one of the worst indie horror flicks you will ever see.
Audio – Not much in the way of audio choices either: your options are English 5.1 Surround or English 2.0 Stereo, with available English subtitles. Even the music of this movie is poor, not much in the way of sound other than the standard creepy background track.
Extras – There are no special features on this disc.
Final Thoughts
Skip It. On the surface, Lake Eerie seems like your typical, fun, dumb, scary, haunted house, hidden secrets, sexy ghost, more-than-meets-the-eye horror flick, when in actuality all of that is just a tease, just a concept that the filmmakers didn’t have the talent to put into motion. The result is a movie that wanted to be all those things but could never be, crawling along like a zombie instead, trying without success to reach an unattainable goal. I’ve seen bad before, bad doesn’t make me cringe, I can take some b-quality as long as it’s laced with some self-awareness. But therein lies the problem; this film wasn’t even ridiculous enough to be entertaining. Instead, it was insultingly poor and a complete waste of time, which will launch it straight toward the bottom of my List. The video, audio, and extras follow suit, so don’t count on the technical to save you, and just move on while you still have the chance, before you regret what you just made your eyes do.
☆ – Content
☆ ☆ – Video
☆ ☆ – Audio
☆ – Extras
☆ – Replay