Queen of Spades: The Dark Rite

Though it opens with a fair degree of promise, Queen of Spades: The Dark Rite eventually devolves into a mess of hackneyed clichés and ineffective scares – with the movie’s downward spiral compounded by an unreasonably, almost astonishingly deliberate pace. The narrative details the consequences of a group of friends’ ill-conceived decision to summon a murderous demon, with the emphasis placed on the efforts of a father (Igor Khripunov) at keeping his daughter (Alina Babak’s Anya) out of the aforementioned demon’s clutches. Filmmaker Svyatoslav Podgayevskiy kicks Queen of Spades: The Dark Rite off with a strong pre-credits interlude detailing the friends’ initial contact with the malevolent presence, with the sequence’s effectiveness heightened by Podgayevskiy’s cinematic visuals and a handful of better-than-anticipated performances. From there, however, the movie quickly segues into a slow-moving and all-too-typical ghost story that’s rife with tedious elements – with, especially, the decision to stress Khripunov’s character’s investigation into the apparition’s horrifying past nothing short of disastrous (ie it’s just not interesting in the slightest). It’s clear, too, that Queen of Spades: The Dark Rite‘s reliance on overly polished special effects hampers its fright factor, while the third-act left-turn into possession territory smacks of desperation and easily exacerbates the already-interminable vibe. The end result is a fairly annoying horror endeavor that looks quite handsome, admittedly, and yet the movie’s overall lack of engaging elements, in the end, renders its positive attributes moot.

* out of ****