Gehenna: Where Death Lives 2016

Gehenna: Where Death Lives is a 2016 American–Japanese horror film written and directed by Hiroshi Katagiri. The film stars Justin Gordon, Eva Swan, Simon Phillips, Doug Jones, Lance Henriksen, and Patrick Gorman.^[1] It was acquired by Uncork’d Entertainment in 2018 and was released on May 4, 2018. An early screening was held at Saipan Regal Cinemas on June 30, 2018.

The film Gehenna: Where Death Lives follows a group of five people exploring the remote island of Saipan, while scouting for a new resort location, who all become trapped in a hidden WWII bunker. The team encounter oddly dressed mummified bodies, a living corpse, and a Japanese man still in war uniform. With the help of a diary written in Japanese they begin to piece together the curse placed on the area, while attempting to survive supernatural and psychological attacks.

• Doug Jones as Creepy Old Man
• Lance Henriksen as Morgan
• Patrick Gorman as Don Rodrigogiobb
• Simon Phillips as Alan
• Sean Sprawling as Pepe
• Eva Swan as Paulina
• Katherine Wallace as Claire
• Justin Gordon as Tyler
• Matthew Edward Hegstrom as Dave

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 50%, based on 8 reviews, and an average rating of 5.6/10.^[18]

Noel Murray from the Los Angeles Times wrote, “Gehenna features impressive gore effects, but the plot’s an uninspired hodgepodge of dozens of other “haunted structure” pictures, set at a plodding pace, in a gray, dim location. It peaks in its first five minutes. The remaining 100 go nowhere, slowly.”^[19] Dennis Harvey from Variety stated that the film’s premise showed promise, and the performances were competent; but was undone by its underdeveloped script, and lack of actual scares.^[20]

Norman Gidney from Film Threat liked the film, stating that, although the film wasn’t perfect, it was “too much fun not to see through to the end.”

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