Film Review: NOCTURNE (2016)

NOCTURNE ** U.S.A. 2016 Dir: Stephen Shimek 90 mins

A young woman trying to get away from her abusive home life goes to her friends house party for one last time before they go their separate ways to various colleges. Starting off the proceedings they devise a ouija board from playing cards and welcome in a spirit who leads them to uncover some unwanted truths about each other. Arguments ensue and the link is broken without saying goodbye to the spirit which manifests itself inside one of the friends and reeks havoc on all involved.
Before the friends realise this though they carry on partying and things escalate from games of “Never have I ever” and strip poker to sex romps resulting in spontaneous combustion (“You’re fucking a corpse…… and so am I”) and being cooked in the hot tub. With everyone in this group of friends harbouring some sordid secret the rather relentless bible quoting spirit claims it is the devil, wanting retribution and has plenty of tormented souls to destroy. The cast features Claire Niederpruem (Zombie Hunter) as Jo and Jake Stormoen (the Mythica movies) as the rather pervy Gabe, amongst others but I mention these 2 as they were the stand outs for me. The standard of acting was not particularly great and more than a little awkward at times but bearable. I thought the effects were pretty good though and I liked the score throughout. I found it flowed okay and was quite fast paced but it did have a fair few “what the fuck?” moments so don’t expect it all to make sense. The ending does kind of tie it all up in a fitting and bleak way though and it has a great song and video over the end credits. I found this a difficult one to rate as the acting wasn’t great but the rest of it was pretty good.

Review by Sarah Budd