Summoning Sylvia
Directed by Wesley Taylor, Alex Wyse
A gay bachelor party takes a spooky turn when sinister spirits are suddenly summoned.
Spirits are suddenly summoned at a gay bachelor party.
Cast: Travis Coles, Frankie Grande, Michael Urie, Troy Iwata, Noah Ricketts, Nicholas Logan, Veanne Cox, Camden Garcia, Sean Grandillo
Member Reviews
Kind of funny, but profoundly annoying. There's a lot of winning comedy surrounding the bachelor party and how the gang interacts, but then the very straight soldier who is suffering from PTSD shows up and it's... ugh. Unbelievably uncomfortable. Trad gay culture vs trad straight culture, with a straight interloper who doesn't want to be there (because he literally just got back from the war, is wrestling with his PTSD, and is deeply uncomfortable with trying to fit into a flamboyantly gay party), and a bunch of gay guys who don't want him there (because his PTSD is unsettling, and his inability to hang is messing everything up). Why is he there? He's the brother of the husband-to-be, and the husband-to-be demands that he goes directly from his flight home from war-torn Afghanistan to the party. It's the kind of setup where unless you are actively friends with someone who is that pushy and braindead, and can thus relate, it's unbelievable. I'm not, so I didn't believe it. Anyway, the rest of the movie is about reclaiming ghosts as allies to gay men, straights as hyperviolent psychos (which like... he's a soldier with PTSD. In a haunted house, where everyone but the witchy character is completely freaked the fuck out. Come on.), and gets somewhat soap-boxy. It ends with the soldier overcoming his PTSD by dressing up as uh... Marilyn Monroe? Bette Davis? I can't remember. Anyways, he dresses up and performs a drag routine while having a glassy-eyed far away look, which the movie itself seems to roundly applaud. I'm open to being wrong about this, but my overall impression is that it's extremely smug about a ridiculous straw-man situation.
funny queer humor
Some funny scenes and dialogue, but not much else outside of that.
While it is absolutely not a bad film and is pretty good, it doesn't uphold the kind of horror that other films Shudder has available. It's surprising that it's even here to begin with being a site dedicated to... horror.
Funny, lighthearted, silly, and entertaining. The production team worked with what it had, and it pays off. I could have done without some of the sentimentality toward the end ("I am what I am!"), but a solid comedy gothic thriller nonetheless.