Netflix Treasure Trove: Fingerprints

The important thing to realize about Netflix ratings is that, even on a 5-star scale, 98.9% of the films do not achieve higher than a 3-star rating.  So essentially, 3 stars = futon critical acclaim, while 1 ½ stars supposedly screams, “YOU’VE GOT WAAY BETTER THINGS TO DO WITH 1HR 57M OF YOUR TIME!”  I haven’t always found these ratings particularly accurate (especially where Eat, Pray, Love and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is concerned. ugh.), but in the sea of pitifully low-budget horror flicks, Fingerprints boasts one of the highest ratings, along with some fairly decent feedback from viewers on the website.  However… this is one of those times when the ratings aren’t so accurate.

Starring Laguna Beach’s Kristin Cavallari and a buttload of other nobodies, the plot of Fingerprints is based on Everytown, USA’s generic urban legend of ghost children at the train tracks who push your car to safety….right down to the baby powder, i.e., the title “Fingerprints.”  Lately, I’ve been on the hunt to find a film that truly creeps me out. Sadly, I grew up on slasher flicks and recently learned that The Exorcist makes my stomach sore with laughter, so I went in knowing that it wasn’t gonna be easy.  I guess it’s no surprise that I didn’t find it in Fingerprints either, but what’s more is that I found the creepiness factor to be absolutely zero.  What we had was a concoction of an unimaginative plot, a fairly predictable ”twist”, dull characters and absolutely no attempt to cause a good scare, not even of the cheap Hollywood variety.

Much to my surprise, I found that the acting could have been a hell of a whole lot worse, specifically in Cavallari’s case. Although anytime the protagonist’s mother appeared on-screen, I couldn’t stop my mental voice from repeatedly asking, “really? seriously?!”.  Her character was like a stiff (yet spastic), terribly unfunny female version of True Blood’s Andy Bellefleur.

Overall, if you’re extremely bored or high/drunk, it might be worth a peek, but I can think of better things to do with a $5,000 budget.  It certainly wasn’t as unwatchable as The Morgue, so I rated it:

#movies,  #netflix  #horror  #fingerprints  #bad horror  #movie reviews  #film