Dull and dark and meandering, Snorehouse Stormhouse will never become anyone's "unjustly overlooked discovery" and is hardly worth seeking out. In our case, it was yet another cutout DVD bought on a whim that proved to be yet another disappointment and waste of a euro-fifty (currently, we might add, wistfully, still the exact price of a no-name beer at the local late-night corner store).
Set in the days of the Iraq War, the narrative spans four consecutive days at a — surprise? — secret underground military installation where, somehow, the powers-that-be have managed to capture and imprison a supernatural entity. On the first day, our figure of identification, Haley Sands (an oddly miscast Katherine Flynn of The Auteur [2008 / trailer] and Once Upon a Time in Venice [2017 / trailer]) arrives, coming across more like the "Woman about to Find Love" in an insipid TV tearjerker than the "Paranormal Investigator" she is meant to be — she does, by the way, find a possible soulmate amidst the bare-boned crew of toxic masculinity manning the facility, the non-military nice-guy Aussie Justin Rourke (Patrick Flynn of No Appointment Necessary [2017 / trailer]), but as Snorehouse Stormhouse is a horror flick, the possible relationship is doomed from the start. (As are most relationships in real life, not to mention marriages.)
Locked nine storeys below ground, Haley quickly gets on the wrong side of the man in charge, Major Lester (Grant Masters of Driven [1998 / trailer], the embarrassment that is Fat Slags [2004 / trailer] and the unexpectedly intriguing Await Further Instructions [2018 / trailer]) — a man, admittedly, that doesn't seem to have a right side. Needless to say, the whole project quickly goes off the rails. First, the entity inexplicably if briefly possesses the major and diverse non-uniformed military plebes, making them — Oh, how Scary! — sing the French song Frere Jacques (a.k.a. Brother John in English), and then, soon after we find out what the military does with captured Muslim terrorists — Hey! Did we just see a kitchen sink fly by in this movie? And when are they gonna sacrifice a Democrat? — the entity escapes and begins to "play". Unluckily for those involved, its version of "playing" is to possess one person after the other* and kill everyone off, one by one — usually off screen or in darkened spaces so poorly lit that little can be seen.
* By the end of the movie, it even possesses a basketball! (Seriously.)
Oddly lacking in suspense and notably uneven in the acting, Snorehouse Stormhouse is above all a mildly interesting idea set in a decent but poorly used location (supposedly a real former military compound) done in by a unsuccessfully paced narrative that has too many holes in it and doesn't really seem to know where it wants to go. Many of its payoff scenes are less payoff than anticlimactic, and the few scenes that offer a visceral shock — for example, when Minister Duncan McGillis (Andrew Hall [19 Jan 1954 – 20 May 2019] of Blood Drive [2017 / trailer] and Kill Ben Lyk [2018 / trailer]) meets his maker — are undone by questionable decisions (we were left wondering where the entity got the red lipstick to draw McGillis's clown face in a facility populated by manly men and one woman whose lipstick choice was noticeably less garish) or dank cinematography. Occasionally a scene does work — the one where Justin gets possessed actually manages to make you forget the ridiculous scene leading up to it, and Lt. Groves (Grahame Fox of Fear the Invisible Man [2018 / trailer], Eve [2019 / trailer] and The Convent [2018 / trailer] does kick a nasty basketball* — but such scenes are rare and don't really jell with the rest of the mess that Snorehouse Stormhouse is.
* Truth be told, though, even fans of basketball "horror" will find greater satisfaction in Wes Craven's infamous basketball scene in his older, tackier but so much better Deadly Friend (1986 / trailer).
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