
Purgatory House
2003·Drama·1h 37m
7.1
★
An inside glimpse of how it feels to be a teen in today's disconnected world. PURGATORY HOUSE chronicles the after-life journey of Silver Strand: a lonely teen who abandons her life of turmoil and drug addiction, only to find herself caught somewhere between heaven and hell. There, she must choose whether she will accept her drab existence or discover within herself the power to change.
Directed by Cindy Baer
drug abuse
classroom
drug addiction
melancholy
surrealism
teen angst
marijuana
drug dealing
self esteem
school shooting
woman director
supernatural power
drug addict
columbine

Trailer

IMDB
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Where to Watch



Cast

Jim Hanks
Saint James

Johnny Pacar
Sam

Ronnie Alvarez
Purgatory House Kid

Brian Dietzen
Ghost

Michele Morrow
Silver's Mom

Megan Duffy
Purgatory House Kid
Crew

John Swihart
Original Music Composer

Eileen Dietz
Property Master
Popular Reviews
2 reviews
Grilliam
2.0★ · 05/02/22

These positive reviews have to be sarcastic because this is trash. It's written by a 14 year old girl who also cast herself as the lead (which explains why she's making out with a boy way out of her league) and it shows in every bit of this movie. I kind of assumed that the girl just did everything, because the effects suck, the acting is awful, the story is very bad, the sound mixing is off, the soundtrack is ill-fit, and the cinematography screams early 2000's YouTube skit. The story is a sick mixture of edgy teen and fantasy fulfilment (not that I can fault her for casting herself as the person who gets to make out with the much more attractive guy she also got to cast). There are tons of stupid little things like how her idea of Purgatory is eating breakfast (which is exactly the same everyday, complete with the cook breaking something at the exact same time and two other characters having the exact same conversation, but her table has a different conversation each day somehow?) and then she's forced into a room with a large TV drawn on the wall to watch EarthTV, which looks like security camera footage of her boyfriend or her dad, and then she goes to her room for bed. In one episode of EarthTV, they have a split screen where one camera is facing her dad and the other is exactly the same shot, but about six inches farther back. What is the point? We watch this actress pretend to pop pills one at a time for like seven minutes. There is so much terrible green screen. This film had to have had a budget of birthday money and there is zero chance they paid for the licencing of the songs they used. How the fuck could they have paid for "Don't Fear the Reaper", Spirit in the Sky", and a Natalie Merchant song when they made their movie using Final Cut Pro 3? This is what you'd get if you went back 10 years and told any teenage girl to write a fan fiction. This has to be a Rebecca Black situation, right? This chick's parents had to have paid for this for her birthday or something because there is no way any real studio or producer would have bank rolled this. No chance a director sank into their easy chair every night and said "We shot some great material today.". No fucking way. It's bad; it's all bad. There certainly is a lot of unintentional humor, but at a point you start to feel shitty laughing at what is essentially a 14 year old's passion project. I mean, she clearly had something she wanted to say and although it came out as pure gibberish and not the deep, philosophical masterpiece she thought she was making, I can tell she believed in this this movie and put her heart in it. It sucks, but it has more passion to it than any of these new Disney remakes or anything Michael Bay does, and she's was 14. What teenager didn't post a terrible skit to YouTube, post a shitty poem on their MySpace page, or make a terribly Photoshoped picture their Facebook profile picture? The plot of Purgatory House makes little sense and the rules of the world make even less, but it's not an unenjoyable trip.
These positive reviews have to be sarcastic because this is trash. It's written by a 14 year old girl who also cast herself as the lead (which explains why she's making out with a boy way out of her league) and it shows in every bit of this movie. I kind of assumed that the girl just did everything, because the effects suck, the acting is awful, the story is very bad, the sound mixing is off, the soundtrack is ill-fit, and the cinematography screams early 2000's YouTube skit. The story is a sick mixture of edgy teen and fantasy fulfilment (not that I can fault her for casting herself as the person who gets to make out with the much more attractive guy she also got to cast). There are tons of stupid little things like how her idea of Purgatory is eating breakfast (which is exactly the same everyday, complete with the cook breaking something at the exact same time and two other characters having the exact same conversation, but her table has a different conversation each day somehow?) and then she's forced into a room with a large TV drawn on the wall to watch EarthTV, which looks like security camera footage of her boyfriend or her dad, and then she goes to her room for bed. In one episode of EarthTV, they have a split screen where one camera is facing her dad and the other is exactly the same shot, but about six inches farther back. What is the point? We watch this actress pretend to pop pills one at a time for like seven minutes. There is so much terrible green screen. This film had to have had a budget of birthday money and there is zero chance they paid for the licencing of the songs they used. How the fuck could they have paid for "Don't Fear the Reaper", Spirit in the Sky", and a Natalie Merchant song when they made their movie using Final Cut Pro 3? This is what you'd get if you went back 10 years and told any teenage girl to write a fan fiction. This has to be a Rebecca Black situation, right? This chick's parents had to have paid for this for her birthday or something because there is no way any real studio or producer would have bank rolled this. No chance a director sank into their easy chair every night and said "We shot some great material today.". No fucking way. It's bad; it's all bad. There certainly is a lot of unintentional humor, but at a point you start to feel shitty laughing at what is essentially a 14 year old's passion project. I mean, she clearly had something she wanted to say and although it came out as pure gibberish and not the deep, philosophical masterpiece she thought she was making, I can tell she believed in this this movie and put her heart in it. It sucks, but it has more passion to it than any of these new Disney remakes or anything Michael Bay does, and she's was 14. What teenager didn't post a terrible skit to YouTube, post a shitty poem on their MySpace page, or make a terribly Photoshoped picture their Facebook profile picture? The plot of Purgatory House makes little sense and the rules of the world make even less, but it's not an unenjoyable trip.
mimi
7.0★ · 11/23/25
