Miffed at having their ancestral burial ground desecrated, and at being murdered in the first place, the ghosts of a clan of Aborigines decides to dispatch some local teens via Kadaicha stone power. What are Kadaicha stones, you ask? Oh, the things we can learn from late-’80s vengeance-from-beyond-the-grave Aussie horror. A sort of magical crystal used by the spirits of Aborigines to curse the living, Kadaicha stones are somehow transmitted to the intended victim through his or her dreams, and anyone receiving such a stone is doomed to die. More specifically, at least as Stones of Death is concerned, if you have a nightmare about half-naked Aborigines dancing in a cave, and wake up holding a Kadaicha stone, you’ll soon be killed by an angry super-animal. Not a bad premise for horror film, melding the vengeful spirit idea of The Amityville Horror with the evil dream interloping of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Sadly, the execution is a clumsy and uninspired mess.
The main problem is that the evil force has no consistent personality. Yes, we see the dancing ghosts from time to time, but the ghosts themselves don’t actually do anything, other than place Kadaicha stones in the hands of dreaming kids. And the stones themselves don’t do anything either, other than eliciting fear in those who receive them. The actual, physical vehicles of death are a dog, a spider, an eel, creatures variously possessed by and made to do the bidding of the spirits of the dead. And though the attacks of these beasts are gruesomely entertaining, it’s never clear who or what is possessed, or where we should direct our fears. Not until one of the young people is possessed by the ephemeral evil does the story take on any real semblance of tension, but by then the tale has largely been told, and it’s not enough to counteract the aimlessness of what came before.
by Thomas Scalzo | Source: SONY VHS
28 Jun 2008 1:03 PM | Submit Comment