When it comes to scary movies, the focus of the fear is sometimes on a place. Haunted house movies are a genre unto themselves, for instance. Then you’ve got your ‘people going crazy in a hotel’ movies: The Shining, 1408, and so on.

New Terminal Hotel is a little bit different. It covers a story that takes place almost entirely within the structure of a Hollywood area hotel, but it goes a fair stretch deeper when it comes to story line. Yes, you’ll see the lead character (who is more of an anti-hero than a protagonist) come unraveled. You’ll see a downward spiral of exactly what can happen beneath the underbelly of the glamorous land of Hollywood. The seedy hotel serves as an impressive backdrop against which quite an assortment of unbalanced characters are set. Even if judging just from the trailer itself, there’s more than enough here to love if you like your horror sleazy, hopeless and brutal.

The main character here is a Hollywood screenwriter (played by Stephen Geoffreys) who is trying to keep his agent thinking that he’s at work on his next script, but experiencing a bit of the phenomenon you might have seen in the movie Permanent Midnight. There’s a bleak side to the creative life and that’s what the movie focuses on. Down on his luck, the screenwriter proceeds to be affected by the other lost and depraved individuals around him. His only real hope is a jaded literary agent (Tiffany Shepis) who visits him from time to time to check on his progress. In a way, it looks as if she’s his main connection to life outside the dilapidated hotel. Her callous response to his increasing desperation and rapidly deteriorating state of mind do nothing to hold the writer back. In one scene he asks her if she thinks he’d make a good killer, if not a writer. That looks to be something of a crossroads as he dives right off the edge of madness.

While the underlying tale of emotional sickness certainly promises a rich and involving story, you aren’t looking at a pure drama along the lines of Larry Clark or Harmony Korine. No, director BC Furtney is definitely delivering an actual horror movie here and there’s plenty of blood to prove it. This is a psychological horror, not simply a thriller. The horrific element of how far a person can go unchecked when those around them look away really sings out here. With an acting force that brings in Corey Haim (of Lost Boys fame), it looks as if Furtney has cast this movie in a strong way that’s going to suck the audience into the picture right from the start and keep them glued to their seats until the end which Furtney promises will be one of those most disturbing we’ve seen all year.

This reviewer has to admit that it looks like there are some David Lynch-like elements in the movie which is a huge plus. All told, New Terminal Hotel looks like a terrific watch, especially if you ever dreamed of testing your mettle in Hollywood yourself. The movie might go a bit more homicidal than most Hollywood burnout tales, but it certainly includes enough of the real experience that aspiring creative talent go through to make you notice that the setting and characters of New Terminal Hotel look uncomfortably familiar.

http://www.newterminalhotel.com