5ive Girls

The used movie store in town was having a ten movies that were priced $1.95 or under for $10.00. All other movies $3.95 or less were half off when you had 10 of the others. $20 and 15 movies later I have some horror ammunition for the next couple of weeks.  5ive Girls is the first these movies. For $1.50 with Ron Pearlman as a priest and a demonically possessed girl in a pentagram on the cover, sign me up. So, to keep the plot summary brief, five "troubled" girls get sent to a recently re-opened school for girls to get back on track. There is a crazy headmistress and the priest, Ron Pearlman.

One of the biggest elements of the movie was the special "powers" of the girls. I found this to be very hit and miss. I liked that Cecelia, who was blind, had a second sight through her tarot cards, but it played almost no part in the movie at all except for her to make a vague prediction of "I see you at the bottom of the stairs Alex, but someone is there with you" that comes true at the end of the movie. The same is true of both Connie and Leah. Connie is called a "conduit" and the similarity between that and her name is joked upon, but I was never clear if that was what gave her the awful bruises and scars or what. And with Leah, she phases through the filing cabinet and then phases through the door to get to Father Ron once she is possessed. For me, her "power" just seems unnecessary. Once she is possessed, there is no need for the power to get her into the room since Legion is more than capable of making anyone do anything. Mara's healing ability is much more prominent as she heals Alex after the beating from Ms. Pierce and heals herself after she is stabbed by Alex/Legion. Also, Alex's telekineses comes into play when she uses it to help her kill Legion at the end of the movie.I don't at all mind the idea of the powers, I just think that if you're going to do it then the powers need to be more prominent and not just a filler to make all 5 girls have power and not just 2 or 3.

Once they established that all of the girls had special powers and that Connie's were kicked into overdrive once she came in contact with Legion, I expected the powers to play a large role in each of their possessions. Unfortunately, the powers are relatively absent here. Connie takes on all sorts of terrible physical problems when Legion first leaks through the floor and possesses her, but once she is actually possessed Legion simply takes over her hand and makes her drown Leah. Her power plays no role in this at all. Leah does use her power when she does slutty and phases through the door to get into the chapel where Father Ron is. I liked where this scene was going. They had already established that she was unable to phase through objects like doors or walls both verbally and when they shower her trying to phase through the door on the third floor, so this makes it apparent that Legion makes her much more powerful. I also liked when Father Ron tries to exorcise Legion and Legion pretends that it is working than laughs at his feeble attempt. As much as I liked Father Ron, I was okay that he was going to die and while I liked his death in terms of its creativity, I didn't think that it fit for Leah. She is the one who can phase through stuff, this is amped up by Legion. Why the hell does she use telekineses to stab Father Ron with the crosses? I think that it would have worked much better thematically for Leah to phase the crosses into him or like phase into his chest and mess with his insides. I though that the possession transfer from Leah to Cecelia started off well also. Especially the moment when Leah first quickly walks through and takes Cecelia's walking stick. After a few minutes though, I thought the scene got a little tedious. We get it, Cecilia is bind and Leah is not so Leah can punch and kick Cecilia at will. I was okay with the transfer of Legion between them and Cecilia beating Leah to death with the huge book. Cecelia's possession was easily my favorite. I thought that she was the best at displaying a distinct contrast between herself when she was possessed and when she wasn't. I loved when she first walked out of the library and stepped aside to avoid something. I also liked that she slipped back into that innocent mode to get into the bedroom with Mara and Alex. I was expecting the "hey, she can see" moment when they realized that Cecelia wasn't Cecilia anymore, but I didn't mind it here since the movie itself was going pretty well so far and had avoided many of the genre cliches. One thing that tripped me up about the possessions was why the huge amount of stabbing that Mara did to Cecilia had no effect, but Alex stabbing Mara was able to take her down, even though she was possessed. I also wasn't sure why Mara was able to heal herself when she woke up but not Alex. I understand that she is only able to heal "fresh wounds", but wouldn't Alex's wound be just as fresh? Despite some inconsistencies in all of the transfers, I was a fan of the impalement by cross that killed Ms. Pierce.

I did like all of the spiritual and religious elements throughout the film. Obviously, the school is originally a catholic school for girls and the stuff with Elizabeth at the beginning shows that, but even there the detail that they go into with the the drawing she is doing about Legion and the 2,000 pigs and the fact that she is writing in Aramaic were nice touches. I also liked the spiritual elements in terms of the Wiccan and pagan elements throughout the movie from the stuff with Connie's amulet and the books that were confiscated to Ms. Pierce's
pentagram with the urine and blood to bind the girls to it. Even the prayers of defense that Father Ron says were accurate in terms of the prayers that priests say when dealing with possessions and performing exorcisms.

The ending was right about what I expected from this movie. I liked that the "janitor" was the father of Elizabeth and Ms. Pierce and thought that was a decent twist, but it was a little frustrating to put everyone through this, even bringing Elizabeth back from wherever she was, just to have Mara presumably escape and Elizabeth under the the mercy of her Legion possessed father.

I think that what bothered me the most about the movie was that we never find out what precisely happened to Elizabeth from the beginning. There is blood all over the floor and Father Ron is so shocked he simply sits in a desk and puts his head down. I wasn't surprised when we didn't see this at the beginning, but I thought that we would get a flashback or recreation sometime during the movie, but nope. I guess it was one of those leave it up to your imagination things, but all we get is she "disappeared" and it makes me question where all the blood came from and why her.

My favorite scene was probably when Ms. Pierce breaks all of the fingers on Mara's healing hand. It was very unexpected because, let's face it, Mara was right when she called her a bitch. I didn't think that there was a chance that Mara would get any of her fingers broken and the fact that all of them got broken was awesome and brutal. I also thought that they did a pretty good job of making her hand look sufficiently damaged. I mean, all of her fingers were broken and I believed it. It carried over well when she was possessed and Legion popped all of the breaks and dislocations back into place.

Overall, I though the movie was fun and a good watch, especially for a dollar fifty. It handled the classic group of girls vs. a supernatural/evil entity well and in a fairly unique way.