Horror tale 'Black Waters of Echo's Pond' earns a Pan

If you crossed Sam Raimi's "The Evil Dead" with Joe Johnston's "Jumanji," you'd sure have a much better movie than Gabriel Bologna's "The Black Waters of Echo's Pond."

All the necessary exploitative elements of a sleazy horror opus are present and accounted for here: gratuitous shower nudity, gallons of splashing blood, possessed souls, cheap shocks and hideous creatures.

But forget about carefully constructed suspense or any degree of empathy with the nasty young people who become trapped on a Maine island before being heinously executed by an icky Greek god and their own dark vices.

"Black Waters" is a horror film that gets the superficial clichés correct (including the done-to-death "it was only a dream" device) but has no understanding of how to connect an audience with its characters so they can freeze the viewers' collective marrow.

During this part of the review, we'd normally identify the various characters and the actors who play them. But since the partyers here are all a loathsome band of shallow, amoral dunderheads, we're going to skip right to the plot.

That's where nine presumed best pals dredge up an ancient box containing what appears to be an elaborate game board, and decide to play it for kicks.

Of course, they didn't see the movie's prologue set in 1927, when an archeological expedition in Turkey uncovers the tomb of the mischievous god Pan, and finds the pieces of the game. These get shipped to Beacon's Island in Maine where researchers play the game, and everyone dies.

Back in the present, the nine friends sit around discussing the strange game board before they roll the die and move their pieces. As they play, their inner naughty selves emerge. They reveal themselves to be more resentful, jealous, duplicitous and lustfully selfish than the entire cast of "Gossip Girl."

Trent (Walker Howard) is the first to succumb to Pan's influence. He starts bleeding black yuck from his eyes and developing a ghoulish set of pointy dentures.

He initiates the body count by tying up a friend and giving him a body massage with a chain saw.

Soon, twin sisters Renee and Erica (Electra Avellan and Elise Avellan) are emitting dark gunk and chasing after the floozy actress (Mircea Monroe) who dared flash her naked bod to their menfolk.

This is a tensionless, by-the-numbers, low-grade horror film without a single character worthy of our sympathy or understanding.

They all possess such unlikeable personalities - even James Duval's rebellious Rick - that knocking them off in gross and terrible ways seems to be a public service.

When Pan finally makes an appearance, he's not the mysterious agent of evil we'd imagine, but an entity with an oversized head and big horns lumbering through the living room.

Robert Patrick, star of "Terminator 2" and 40 episodes of TV's "The X-Files," goes slumming here as Pete, apparently the only person who actually lives on Beacon's Island, and never bothered to dig up Pan's game for a round of solitaire.

"The Black Waters of Echo's Pond"Rating: #9733;Starring: Robert Patrick, Danielle Harris, James Duval, Nick MennellDirected by: Gabriel BolognaOther: A Parallel Media release. Rated R for drug use, language, nudity, sexual situations, violence. 91 minutes