Movie Review: The Telling (2009)

This could have been cinematic gold. This could have been the answer to millions of acne-infested teenage boys and comic book collecting Star Trek geeks in their forties. It could have absolutely ruled. Why, you ask? Here’s the premise: a bunch of Playboy Playmates make a horror movie and shoot it at the Playboy mansion. Seriously, the potential is very, very great. Unfortunately, The Telling fails on every level. If there were a pill that was the reverse of Cialis, something like Viagrunt or Flaccidodine… I don’t know. There doesn’t need to be, though. If your erection persists for over four hours just pop The Telling into the player and you’ll shrinky dink like you just watched Steven Tyler have sex with Joan Rivers.

Buy The Telling on DVD!

I don’t know why, but anthology films have been falling across my desk lately. The latest is The Telling. Like I said, this could have been awesome (it isn’t), but it fails on nearly every level. The gorgeous women are there, the high production values are there, the nice camera work is there but there are some things missing. Some very important things. These things come in pairs. We’ll talk about them later.

The Telling concerns a group of three girls that are pledging a sorority. The year before the sorority of evil bitches got into a little trouble when someone they blackballed committed suicide, so this year they haven’t changed a thing, of course. The new girls must each tell a scary story to get into the sorority. Now, before going further, the sorority is made up of Playboy Playmates including Holly Madison, Bridget Marquardt, Nicole Zeoli, Angela Davies, Ashley Noel, etc., etc. One would think that since these glorified call girls spend half of their time parading naked in front of a septuagenarian they would have no problem dropping tops in their own movie. Nope. Nary a Playboy breast in sight. Could have saved the picture… could have saved the world but, alas… This pile was directed by Nick Carpenter and written by Joe Lessard. Who, you ask? Well, their credits delve pretty deeply into the reality TV world, so I guess we can’t expect too much.

Oh, crap. I forgot to tell you about the “story.” So, evil sorority, three girls tell scary stories and then the evil sorority gets their comeuppance. Those three scary stories consist of: evil doll makes three way love triangle difficult, young actress falls in with a bunch of undead filmmakers and three girls are stalked by a crazy guy on the phone. Yep, that’s the best they could come up with. I don’t know if the material was actually brilliant to begin with and a bunch of bimbos screwed it up or if it sucked from the beginning. Either way, The Telling done got told. I can’t believe I waited the whole review before I busted out that one.