atrick (Kain) and his sister, brother and friend have found what they think is the perfect place for their new club: an abandoned house in a decrepit old neighborhood. They don't know that the house has a dark history—one connected to their father, Jeremiah (Clifton Powell), and his late friend, Jimmy Bones (Dogg).
Back in the day—1979, to be precise—Bones was the mack-daddy Robin of the 'hood, a numbers runner who was more like a benevolent paterfamilias. In his flowing black coat, hat and suit, Bones presided over a thriving neighborhood full of hopes and dreams.
But something happened involving Bones' devoted girlfriend, Pearl (Grier); old pal Jeremiah; shady gangster Eddie Mack (Ricky Harris); and corrupt detective Lupovitch (Weiss). Bones disappeared, Jeremiah moved up in life, and eventually the bright community fell into darkness and despair.
More than 20 years later, the idealistic Patrick and his pals have plans to help revive the area. They run into a middle-aged Pearl, now a psychic, and her alluring daughter, Cynthia (Lawson), who still live there. When Pearl discovers that Patrick and company want to reoccupy the old house, she issues a stern warning: "It's a bad place and a door to worse." Despite an obvious connection between Patrick and Cynthia, Pearl forbids her daughter to go anywhere near the old house. Jeremiah also reacts with horror when he hears of his son's plans.
Undeterred, Patrick and the others move into the old house. Weird things ensue. A sinister black dog lives in the house, whom the group promptly adopts. Then there are the apparitions and noises, some warning the group to leave. Then the dog leads the group to a sub-basement, where they make a grisly discovery. But there's a club to open, and Patrick and Cynthia are getting ever closer. ...
A ghostly howler goes to the dogs
This supernatural thriller marks the big-screen debut of rapper Dogg, aka Calvin Broadus, who seems intent on following in the footsteps of compatriots from Ice Cube to Ice-T to Rah Diggah, all of whom have carved out careers in the movies. Dogg has a nice presence as the titular malevolent entity, a role that appears designed to exploit the rapper's street persona, replete with canine references—one of the film's catch phrases is "It's a dog-eat-dog world." But Dogg's performance in the flashback scenes as the implausibly good-hearted, antidrug criminal is barely passable, which is not helped by the irony of Dogg's well-publicized alleged predilection for controlled substances.
Otherwise, the film starts out promisingly as a kind of allegory of urban America, with various characters and situations standing in for the drugs, crime, corruption and betrayal that have contributed to the decline of the inner cities. It's terrain that director Dickerson has trod before, notably in Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight and as the cinematographer on John Sayles' Brother from Another Planet. Dickerson also pulls out the stops visually to up the creep factor.
Simon and Metcalfe's script shows flashes of wit here and there, as in one character's speech about being multiracial, postmodern and the culmination of Martin Luther King's dream.
Alas, the movie doesn't do much with its premise and rapidly devolves into a standard-issue revenge scenario, a la The Crow and countless other genre films. The mounting horror-movie cliches defy common sense—why do they keep the dog around, for example? And the film builds to an all-too-predictable Grand Guignol climax that begs comparisons with Nightmare on Elm Street, to Bones' disadvantage.
There are a few things to like. The flashback scenes—with Grier in full-on Coffy mode—are reminiscent of '70s blaxploitation flicks. The young leads are appealing, if mostly generic; Kain and Lawson (late of Buffy the Vampire Slayer) show some good chemistry.
