Review: Hidden 3D (2011)

"This movie needs to take a cue from its title and be hidden away from moviegoers eyes..."

Once Argento film vet Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni and her writing partner walked off of this movie due to "creative differences" with the producers, the whole thing should have been scrapped. We may never know what the movie would have been in its original, intended form, but we absolutely know what it is now, in its current form...

A ridiculous mess.

As if the unoriginal storyline wasn't bad enough (A guy inherits creepy mansion where something "just isn't right"), this English-language Italian Horror flick makes so little sense, and has so little tension packed into it, that we think maybe it's meant to be a crazy Italian Comedy.

She was captivating though.

Let's break down the plot and count the ways in which this movie confounded us:

Some guy's Mom was a crazy doctor doing experiments which had something to do with addiction, and somehow spawned angry bees and kids with no eyes, which is never really explained at all. When she dies, he inherits a Hospital and heads there with a group of friends. We have no idea why. They just go there because "It'll be good for you."

When they arrive, they find a "team" that one of the guys brings with them to the mansion, that consists of one crotchety old man in a van, who serves absolutely no purpose in the movie at all. We never get a hint why he's there, or how one person could be called a team.

What?

The group of friends begins to look around and chase bees, while "The Team" grouses around and wanders off into some lonely part of the Hospital. Upon finding a secret staircase behind a hidden door in a mysterious room, one of the characters exclaims "The stairs keep going down, it's crazy!" Yeah. It's insane to imagine stairs going up or down, because that's not the defining characteristic of stairs at all.

I'm not sure why the 3D moniker even applies here; other than the angry bees, there's not much 3D going on in the movie. And on that note, what's with the angry bees? I mean, would you follow a giant insect or a swarm of bees into a creepy old building, down into its sub-levels, all because "I'm real curious about those bees?" No. You wouldn't. Neither would anyone else with half a brain. Hell, 1/8th of a brain.

Ghost kids appear and disappear, only to reappear again before disappearing. Maybe they're the beekeepers?

That's a shitty-looking CGI bee.

In one riveting scene, a guy, upon seeing his girlfriend dragged off by whatever drags her off, just kinda stands there like "Oh man, that sucks." In all fairness to him though, he could have been on a large dosage of Xanax for all we know, and maybe he was just feeling all mellow and serene.

For the rest of the movie we're treated to jump-scares and quick-cuts galore, which means nothing is even remotely scary, and we see next to nothing "good" happen on screen. Oh wait, we do get to see one guy kick some iron bars to try and get to his trapped girlfriend, actually thinking "Hey, I can kick through these iron bars!" Wow.

Not even the hot chicks could save this clunker...

This movie is a confused and as forgettable as they come. The script is shamefully bad, the acting isn't much better, and aside from running for 80 minutes or so, the movie does nothing at all. Whoever dropped the ball on this one should feel genuine shame for tinkering around with movie that may have worked otherwise. Maybe.

At least the movie gave us some beautiful women to stare at for a while. That's something.