Nerds That Geek Movie Review: ‘Stage Fright’ (2014)

Written by Scott Edwards 

I have to hand it to stage actors, I really do. Everything that they do is live, and they do not get a second take like when making a movie. One and done and if they mess up, the show could suffer, or in some cases it could become better. The pressure of getting everything right every night has to be tremendous and I know how it feels to be in front of a small crowd hoping not to mess up, so a packed house must make it that much worse. But I can see why they do it, especially when everything goes right, you get the feeling that you can accomplish anything, but you need to keep doing it to keep that feeling alive.

It's opening night on Broadway and the new production of The Haunting of the Opera has just ended and its star Kylie Swanson is being praised. The producer Roger McCall is impressed as well, and he only has nice things to say to his star when her children are around. Getting her mother’s autograph, Camilla wants nothing more to be just like her when she grows up and while on the main stage, she sings and dances in front of the empty theater. But someone is backstage with Kylie and when she is approached from behind by the Ghost of the Opera, she believes it is her new lover, but before she finds out who the masked man really is, she is stabbed in the throat, not only ending her career in song, but her life as well.

Ten years later, Camilla and her brother Buddy are working at a musical camp where all of the attendees love nothing more than to sing and dance. Being taken in by Roger McCall after their mother’s gruesome murder, they have taken on the cooking duties for all of the paying customers. Roger wants nothing more than to be able to return to the big stage on Broadway and is ready to resurrect The Haunting of the Opera from the dead. With his prized student directing, Artie Getz has a vision that will blow the minds of everyone that sees the old musical come back to life, but he will have to cast all of the parts before he is truly able to move on. Camilla will never get over the death of her mother and knows there is one thing that will bring her closer to the woman that raised her, getting the part of Sofia that her mother was praised for so many years ago, but there is a problem, she is not a paying attendee of the camp, making the audition process almost impossible for her.

But that doesn't stop her and she finds a way to make herself known at the audition, and it turns out that Camilla is perfect for the role and is ready to take the first step into acting, but nobody seems too happy about it, including her brother. Running through rehearsals, Camilla is starting to realize her dream and Artie is getting very excited about her performance, but for him, it will come at a cost. When Camilla stops him from taking advantage of her, he recasts the role of Sofia to her understudy Liz who will do anything to get on stage. But there is someone in the camp that does not like the idea of The Haunting of the Opera and will do anything to stop it. When Artie is found dead on stage, Roger tries to calm down his campers and get the police called right away, but when he gets a call back from a Broadway producer that will be attending the show, he only thinks about the benefits and not the risks of putting the show on. The show begins without a hitch, but as the performance moves on and actors are found dead backstage, Camilla is let in on a ten-year-old secret that will force her to give a performance of a lifetime.

A musical horror movie, who would have thunk it?  These are two genres that rarely get combined, but when they do, I think that it is magical. I really liked how this storyline played out since you are put back in camp and we all know what happens to teenage kids at a camp, especially in a horror movie, just add singing in this case. I liked the interactions between the characters, and while poor Joel who has the hots for Camilla did get his screen time, he never really got the girl. I don’t think that many of the backend characters got a lot of growth or development, you only got to stick with the mains throughout, so it is hard to find an up and coming star, but the singing was great and I am sure that most of them are probably on stage right now. A fun movie with comedy, singing, blood and of course some hard rock music for the metal fans out there, it is hard to be hateful toward this film since this horror/musical genre has yet to be tapped fully to see where it can take us. Stay Scared.

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