#19 - Saturday Morning Mystery (2012)

Saturday Morning Mystery (2012)

(dir. Spencer Parsons)

A real life "Scooby Doo"-style mystery solving team is hired to investigate a supposedly haunted house, to dispel rumors about ghosts and demonic activity.  However, the meddling kids soon find themselves in over their heads, and fall victim to what seems to be real supernatural activity.  A realistic and gory Scooby Doo movie is a fun premise, but unfortunately this film doesn't live up to its potential.  The dialogue is atrocious, the acting is terrible, and the story is just generally not very interesting.  Basically every "joke" in the movie falls completely flat, either due to poor delivery by the actors or just plain terrible writing.

The characters spend most of the movie kind of mumbling their lines and standing around awkwardly.  The dialogue is completely unconvincing, and every conversation sounds forced and unnatural.  I don't think the blame lies entirely with the actors though, as it is clear that they were not given very much to work with.  The only scene that actually works at all happens before the opening credits, where the team investigates a "haunting" that turns out to be a cover for a pornography ring.  This film should have been a short subject and ended there, but instead it goes on for another 80 tedious minutes.

I was pretty disappointed in this one.  The potentially good premise is completely wasted, and the majority of the film is embarrassingly bad.  If you want to see an actually good Scooby Doo parody, there is a season two episode of The Venture Brothers called ¡Viva los muertos! that is executed a million times better than this film.