''Beneath the Surface'' is a 2007 American

horror comedy Comedy horror, also known as horror comedy, is a literary, television, and film genre that combines elements of comedy and horror fiction. Comedy horror has been described as able to be categorized under three types: "black comedy, parody and sp ...

film written and directed by Blake Reigle. It stars Kyle Stanley as a high school student who uses voodoo to resurrect his crush, played by Dominique Geisendorff, when she dies.

Plot

High school senior Ethan has a crush on his childhood friend, Kahlah. Ethan believes that Kahlah's boyfriend, Shane, is dangerous, but he does not know how to tell her without seeming to be crazy. Annoyed by her reluctance to have sex with him, Shane drugs and accidentally kills Kahlah. Convinced that Shane is guilty, Ethan uses his anthropologist neighbor's knowledge of voodoo to raise Kahlah from the dead as a zombie so that she can help him prove Shane's guilt.

Cast

* Kyle Stanley as Ethan * Dominique Geisendorff as Kahlah * Christian Munden as Eric * Brett Lawrence as Shane * Jerry Schumacher as Shane's father * Gloria Grant as Angelica

Production

Shooting took place in

Irvine, California Irvine () is a master-planned city in South Orange County, California, United States, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Irvine Company started developing the area in the 1960s and the city was formally incorporated on December 28, 197 ...

Release

''Beneath the Surface'' premiered at

Seattle's True Independent Film Festival Seattle True Independent Film Festival (STIFF) was started in 2005 by a group of filmmakers whose feature film Swamper was rejected by the Seattle International Film Festival. STIFF was modeled after the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City UT as ...

on June 3, 2007.

Well Go USA Entertainment A well is an excavation or structure created in the ground by digging, driving, or drilling to access liquid resources, usually water. The oldest and most common kind of well is a water well, to access groundwater in underground aquifers. T ...

released ''Beneath the Surface'' on DVD on October 7, 2008.

Reception

John Latchem of ''

Home Media Magazine ''Home Media Magazine'' was a trade publication that covered various aspects of the home entertainment industry, most notably home video distribution via VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, and digital copy. The magazine also covered news relating to consumer el ...

'' wrote that the film is "somewhat unpredictable". Steve Barton of Dread Central rated it 3.5/5 stars and praised Reigle's "raw directorial talent and great writing sensibilities". Steve Pattee of HorrorTalk rated it 1.5/5 stars and wrote, "''Surface''s story is so completely predictable, it's frightening." Writing in ''The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia, Volume 2'', academic

Peter Dendle Peter Dendle is a professor of English at Penn State Mont Alto, teaching classes on folklore, 20th and 21st century representations of the Middle Ages, Old and Middle English (language and literature), and the monstrous (in film, folklore, and s ...

said, "This rough teen drama from southern California captures a gritty feel in some scenes, in part because of the limited production values, but overall fails to create a consistent mood or emotional connection." It won best feature at the

Sacramento Horror Film Festival ) , image_map = Sacramento County California Incorporated and Unincorporated areas Sacramento Highlighted.svg , mapsize = 250x200px , map_caption = Location within Sacramento ...

References

External links

* {{IMDb title, 1043427
Interview with the director
2007 films 2007 horror films 2007 comedy horror films American comedy horror films American independent films American supernatural horror films American zombie comedy films Films shot in California Films about Voodoo Parodies of horror 2007 comedy films 2000s English-language films 2000s American films