My unfortunate self-imposed task of reviewing movies on free streaming channels naturally led me to watch quite a few Tubi originals. Of the ones I've bothered to review, the highest rating I've given so far is 4 stars. But hey, I don't want to be a terminal cynic. In the interest of fair and balanced reporting, I browsed the list of two hundred or so Tubi originals looking for a movie I might give a mediocre if not positive rating. Christ, is it a poor selection. Most of them are subpar Lifetime knockoffs with titles like Deadly DILF. I counted no less than three shark movies. There's a handful of true crime turds like Fresh Meat, winner of the Movie Crank Award for Most Tasteless Title for a Jeffrey Dahmer Documentary. Eventually I realized that even mediocrity was too high of an expectation and watched Dante's Hotel more or less at random. Gee, I wonder if this hotel will turn out to be haunted.

The movie starts with a massacre at the Dantenu Hotel, the only survivor of which is a twelve-year-old kid who grows up to be Judd Nelson. He moves into the hotel and can't be evicted because of a lawsuit settlement. Some four decades later, the hotel hosts a New Year's party. People start getting killed again. The culprit is a Grim Reaper type. Judd has a theory that the Reaper is killing people for "disrespecting time." I wasn't sure exactly how one disrespects time until I realized that this movie made ninety minutes of my life its bitch.

The only remarkable aspect of Dante's Hotel is the imaginative ways the filmmakers found to express their incompetence. It's the first movie I've ever seen where I took notice of how bad the makeup was. I don't mean the special effects makeup. I mean the bog standard cosmetics they put on actors who are supposed to be playing human beings. Half the cast looks like they got glazed with wax. The other half looks like they were made out of papier mache. A few shots are constructed from CGI for no apparent reason. How the hell do you take something as mundane as a guy standing in a hallway and make it look unconvincing? With red flags like these, it should come as no surprise that the actual special effects are decidedly underwhelming. The Grim Reaper's sickle doesn't even look sharp.

My search for a Tubi original that earns a passing grade continues.

3 out of 10.

Seen on fucking Tubi.