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TapeHead Reviews: The Convent
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Hands down, this is the best movie I saw while in Cannes. A hyper-stylized <I>Night of the Demons</I> except twice as fast and ten times funnier, <I>The Convent</I> begins with a teenage Catholic schoolgirl (in a pleated skirt and leather motorcycle jacket) busting into a convent and slaughtering a bunch of nuns and priests with a pump action shotgun. The movie continues at this breakneck pace until the end credits roll - this film is a non-stop barrage of action, gore, and comedy that flies by with pacing that I haven't experiences in a theater in years. Especially after sitting through bloated efforts like <I>Gladiator</I> and <I>MI:2</I>. Hollywood would do well to take a lesson from <I>Convent</I> director <B>Mike Mendez</B>, who knows how to keep the plot moving and quit while he's ahead.
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The plot of <I>The Convent</I> is nothing new. Years after the above-mentioned slaughter, the convent in question is an abandoned edifice frequented by partying teenagers. Enter our group: the jock, his girlfriend, the Goth chick, the stoner, the lackey, etc. They go to the haunted convent as part of a fraternity pledge (and to get high and have sex, natch), they separate, and soon mysterious forces are awakened to possess the kids one by one. The lone survivor must find the (now grown) nun-killing schoolgirl from the film's prologue (a motorcycle-riding, ammunition-expending <B>Adrienne Barbeau</B>!!) to vanquish the demons. Along the way there's a subplot about a small group of "Satan Worshippers" (these sequences are hands-down the funniest moments in the film - the Satan worshippers are led by a wanna-be Goth who's just trying to get laid) who are also in the building. Eventually, good wins over evil, but not until the body count rockets into the stratosphere . . .
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