Seonmi Wall This movie was outright creepy and that's why it's my #1 favourite. I recommend that you DO NOT watch this at night. The Banshee Chapter was a mix of mystery and horror which perfectly blended together to create something horrifying. The broadcast that was trying to be solved was rather disturbing and there was also a major jump scare near the beginning that you would never expect. Normally, with those corny horror movies, you can usually tell if something is about to jump out (aka- the creepy music starts to play). But this movie, however, was nothing like that and you just can't predict when it's going to scare you which makes it the best horror movie I have ever seen. The only thing I was confused about was the broadcast, which they never really explained.Solid 10/10 :D

MrDeadMan esq This film is like a freshman in college: tons of awesome ideas and potential, but no clue what it wants to be when it grows up. Its a jumbled mess of cinematic styles, real life conspiracy theories and pop culture icons, like a B-movie equivalent of an X-Files knock off that tried to string all of these half cooked ideas together with thin exposition and a wanna-be M Knight Shamalaan ending.The film starts itself as a found footage style horror film, more in the vein of the cryptic scenes from the Ring than in a linear story sort of fashion. the viewer does get the set up, however: DMT-19, this special concoction born of MKUltra, has been obtained by James, a documentary film maker who intends to take the drug and... I don't know... figure out the secret of MKUltra, I guess. A few jumbled cut scenes and a shoehorned jump scare later, we learn he disappears. The viewer is introduced to Anne (Katia Winter), the one time Friend-Zone trapping interest of James, who goes on an investigative journalistic journey to find out what happened to her college friend. She enlists the help of Thomas Blackburn (who is a thinly veiled caricature of Hunter Thompson, played by Ted Levine) the man who provided the DMT-19 to James, the missing friend. the cinematography jumps around in "found footage" style, "shot like it should be found footage but the camera man probably just is mildly drunk or has Parkinsons", "poorly lit" and "normal". The plot tries to slide in references to an H.P. Lovecraft story as the explanation of the "they" who are coming to get "them", as told to us in Hunter S. Levine exposition. Really though, it's the slowest and worst way to abduct people and transport across dimensions for (what I can only imagine is) an invasion. I'd expect better from Lovecraft's "Old Ones".What This Film Did Well:The atmosphere in a few of the scenes lent itself to genuine tension and creepiness. Ted Levine still did a good job with a crappy, K-Mart model Hunter Thompson Character. the Creep Factor of the Number Station transmissions (Google The Conet Project)What This Film Failed In Doing Well:Characterization. Motivation. Cinematographic style consistency. Any sort of horror other than lame jump scares. A premise that made sense. Overall:Meh. the synopsis sounded cool, but it failed to deliver on anything more than a low budget, jump-scare attempt at horror with a vague knowledge of real-world phenomena, conspiracy theories, Lovecraft and Hunter Thompson. Watch it if you have nothing better to do, and by nothing better, I mean you are bed ridden and the remote is too far away to change the channel. !!!BIG SPOILER BELOW!!! OK, so the end of this movie shows us that Blackburn was one of the MKUltra guinea pigs who was electro-shocked into retrograde amnesia. It is further inferred since Anne did not take the substance, but was touched by Blackburn, that she is now a potential target by the Old Ones, just as James' partner was touched by James and also became a target, even though he did not take the drug. So if everyone Blackburn touched became a target, that means that these Old Ones have been snatching people since the 1960s and the drug itself was a means of trans-dimensional body snatching and those who were the Snatched murdered anyone they came in physical contact with... or made them a conduit for the Old Ones. If you don't follow, don't worry... it doesn't make sense.Also, the subjects taking the DMT were mumbling the chemical composition of the DMT-19, passed as a message from the Old Ones so that the scientists could make this new compound and the Old Ones could use it as a means of conveyance to our dimension. So what attacked the subject who was only on DMT and not the DMT-19, a formula that had not yet been created?Yet again ALSO, why did Anne not know what the chair in the experiment chamber was used for when Hunter... err... Thomas asked her about it? She saw the MKUltra video files. It literally showed her exactly what that chair was used for. and still more ALSO, who put the Old One in the Iron Lung? and how did it build a radio transmitter from within the Iron Lung to act as a catalyst with the spook music? did people have to hear the spook music to get Snatched? and if that whole setup was the way the old ones Snatched people, the combination of the DMT-19 and the spook music, once Anne destroyed what I assume was the original Old One and the means of propagating the spook music, how did it project the spook music after it was destroyed? You know what? Whatever. I'm done. This movie was dumb.

Ringworm7 The title "Banshee Chapter" intrigued me, though the poster gave away the jump scares. (I saw this on Amazon, I can imagine it was better in the theatre and in 3D.) The MK-Ultra hook grabbed me, because I remember when the CIA documents were released via the Freedom of Information Act and President Clinton actually apologized to the country. However, it was when I saw the term "numbers stations" I knew I had to see this movie.Shortwave radio has been a fascination of mine since childhood. Having ham radio enthusiasts for parents means you get a few old radios to "play" with. The shortwave frequencies fascinated me endlessly because you could hear the cosmos, using radio astronomy you could hear pulsars, quasars, supernovas ... pretty cool, right? I'd listen for rhythms in the chaos, moving the dial the slightest of notches.Then I found the "numbers stations." And this is why I give this movie 9/10. That's only -1 for everything other reviewers complain about. Numbers stations are real, and they are quite spooky when you find them. The station used prominently in this movie is REAL, you can find it for yourself. I had listened to that station so often, for so many years, I'd had so many dreams and nightmares about it, that it made the movie feel very, very real to me. I'm pretty sure the film makers were counting on some audience members' familiarity with shortwave numbers stations, or with mind-altering drugs, to give it a boost.I recommend this movie to all my friends, *after* I play them a few numbers stations ... they say the movie is horrifying, truly scary. Great use of real facts, events and real news clips in an otherwise standard horror flick. Google "CONET Swedish Rhapsody" before watching and listen for a real scary treat at 2:48 in the recording, then watch Banshee Chapter.

begob Basically a missing person mystery with heavy reliance on sound/shadow jump-scares.Intriguing opening sequence, followed by a dull start to the investigation, where the pace flags. This is recurrent, and the story has to jump start with ... you know. Too many moving parts, I reckon, and it feels a bit contrived, always having to explain itself.Jump scares? At least ten. The first few are very effective, making me blush in my girly reaction. But near the climax you can tell the actress has been directed to angle the torchlight away from a dark space because there's going to be a ... Jump!Scare! Is it down to the scene itself, or audience fatigue? Hmmm.The actor playing the Hunter Thompson type stoner novelist is very good. Not impressed with the lead - standard strong woman issue, but she left me cold anyway.A lot of reviewers have praised the sound structure - thought it was good, nothing special.A Venn diagram of the story would overlap Cthulhu/alien/libertarian paranoia. Strangely it delivers a clunky anti-drugs message in the penultimate location - should have applied that to ... you know.ps. the novelist's voice is unmistakable - but I had to confirm on the Silence of the Lambs page.