Queen Of Spades: The Dark Rite

Queen of Spades: The Dark Rite (Pikovaya Dama. Chyornyy Obryad) (2015)

Runtime: 93 minutes

Directed by: Svyatoslav Podgayevskiy

Starring: Alina Babak, Valeriya Dmitrieva, Igor Khripunov, Evgenia Loza, Sergey Pokhodaev

From: Enjoy Movies/Ultrafilm

This is a random film I saw on Wednesday night; I saw no movie last night as I went to the big comic con in Orlando known as Megacon (which was a lot of fun, although it was exhausting) and tonight I'll be rewatching something I've seen and reviewed before so I'll be back Sunday night with a new review. For now, here's this random Russian horror flick which isn't exactly unique:

Here is another movie I stumbled upon on Amazon Prime; its main distinction is that it's a 2015 flick from Russia, thankfully subtitled. I wasn't sure what to expect from a modern Russian horror movie; at least from this example, it was “quite derivative of horror films from Hollywood, both classic and modern.”

After all, the plot is that some youths are together and they do a deal where they draw a door and some steps on a mirror and they say a phrase three times so the title character can show up... indeed, not very original. From there, those youths are haunted and they try to cover up all mirrors but that goes awry... I won't spoil anything but plenty of “homages” can be seen throughout, and you don't have to be a horror expert to spot most of them.

To the movie's credit, it does look and sound good, and I can't complain about the performance of the actors, and the characters are not intolerable. Unfortunately, most of it seems old hat as so many things are borrowed, including general themes. The big bad is a goofy CG creation and there are jumpscares. For many people who watch even a small amount of horror, it will come across as unoriginal. At least with what is mixed together the movie is alright, an average watch. It's not gory, like at all; that wasn't a big deal to me.

I was amused by some aspects of the movie. For example, one of the trademarks of Queen is that she... cuts off a small part of the victim's hair right before the kill. The backstory to the character explains it but it still is a little daffy. I won't reveal what these moments are but I just about guffawed a few times due to some bonkers moments that come out of nowhere, and I wondered a few times if a character really knew what they were talking about in their “expert” position or they were just pulling things out of their ass at the spur of the moment.

Hopefully there is modern Russian horror that has more of a Russian flavor rather than riffing on famous American horror... and if so, I'd like to see some of that in the future.