The Night Before Halloween (2016)

Every October I typically watch at least one bad SYFY horror flick centered around Halloween or is shown specifically in the month. This film starring Bailee Madison ("Are You Afraid of the Dark" (2010)) is about a curse that pursues and kills kids the night before Halloween unless they can cause someone (on purpose) to die. Madison is the lead of a small group betrayed by friend, Kyle (Jahmil French), who wants out of the curse and sets them up by causing a knife in a pumpkin to shock Beth (Natalie Ganzhorn)...too bad for Kyle, Beth goes into a coma and is left by her friends at a hospital. Because they were able to avoid the curse when Halloween hits, they're granted a year's reprieve. However, Hallow's Eve hits and the curse returns to pursue the group again. Eventually some among the group betrays each other out of an "act of preservation". The approach is quite serious, although a creature shaped out of flies is Digital effects camp. I couldn't take the cursed creature at all seriously...the flies are just not scary and when they form a creature reaching out for victims, this just reminds me of those horror films like "The Haunting" (1999) and "The Fog" (2005) where faces form in curtains or fog. Madison's "heel turn" at the end, where her boyfriend (Justin Kelly) cuts his throat while she doesn't--it was one of those suicide pacts instigated by her in order to "really want to live"--is shocking enough to get 1.5 instead of 1 out of 5. Detectives try to unravel what happened to Beth and how her friends were responsible. Lots and lots of fly effects. The flies knock one victim out of a window and hurls another victim through an interrogation window...yes, those scenes happen.