Fingerprints (2006) 4/10

When one of the selling points for Fingerprints was that it starred a girl from MTV's Laguna Beach, I should have known this would blow. Should have...but didn't.

Fingerprints is a ghost story of sorts about a high school girl Melinda who moves to a small town. The local legend says that a group of kids were riding in a school bus when the bus got stuck on railroad tracks just as a train came and of course killed them all. To this day if you let your car get stuck on the tracks the ghosts of the little kids will push you car into safety. When Melinda's friends start dying under strange circumstances she sets out to find the truth about the legend and about the murders.

Let me begin by saying I am obviously not the person this film was marketed to. It has a cast of cute teenage kids straight from day time television trying to dig into a myth Nancy Drew style. The film oozes its intent to draw in teen girls, and teen girl I am not. From the soft lighting to the ridiculously unfair portrayal of Melinda's parents, to the teen relationship melodrama, to the medium dose of gore. Wait....what? Gore? In a teeny bob movie? Yup. Totally out of place and unnecessary there is indeed a handful of pretty gory sequences. Maybe its to draw in a few teeny boyfriends to sit down and watch the film as well? I don't know. All I can say is that the gore feels totally out of place here, as out of place as I felt watching it. Beyond the fact that the film obviously wasn't made for my demographic the script here is terrible. Sure its got bad dialogue and a beyond mind numbingly terrible ending but the actions of the characters as well as the whole structure of the film are terrible. Hell it's even revealed that there was no train accident in the town. So why do the kids push the cars over the tracks? There's plenty of giant holes like this in the film and by the end of the picture it's almost completely unraveled. Overall the film feels pretty bland as well. The lighting is boring as are the shot setups.

Fingerprints is a bland film obviously made for the teen market but with poorly done and questionably placed gore that seems to be the odd piece of the puzzle that doesn't fit. The script is very poorly written and the acting is bad. Next.

Gore-mild/medium

Nudity-mild

Overall - 4/10