I’m a sucker for urban exploration. And I’m a sucker for horror flicks. Put the two together and I will watch it. Mostly, these kinds of movies have been disappointing, but that could be said for any subgenre of film. For every good movie, there are three dogs.
Today’s dog is Do Not Enter, based on the novel Creepers by David Morrell. It was helmed by prolific music video director Marc Klasfeld, from a screenplay by Dikega Hadnot, Spencer Mandel, and Stephen Susco. The story is simple, which is a plus for a movie like this.
The Paragon, a luxury hotel on the Jersey Shore, has been abandoned for decades. Rumors are that Meyer Lansky, the infamous gangster, had a secret stash of millions of dollars in the hotel, and it is still there waiting for someone to find it. This catches the attention of The Creepers, a group of urbexers trying, and failing, to get internet famous. But, The Paragon has been a well-known and unattainable get amongst the urban exploration community, so they think doing a proper exploration, and finding the money, to boot, would get them the views they crave.
The first problem with this flick are The Creepers, themselves. They’re an unlikable bunch. Their ostensible leader is Rick (Jake Manley), but he allows the group to be pulled by the nose by Diane (Adeline Rudolph), who is the type of garrulous internet personality that evokes violent thoughts. There is also Cora (Francesca Reale), whose contribution to the group is parkour and vapidness, and Vernon (Shane Paul McGhie), a 
character who has the grace to spend most of his time as an anonymous cameraman, although this is not a found footage movie. They are joined by Frank (Laurence O’Fuarain), a reporter from Vice Media who may be harboring a secret (he is).
After the The Creepers make their way into the hotel, the final cast members join, in a rival urbex group called The Scavengers. These guys aren’t ethical, like The Creepers. They include former Creeper JD (Kai Caster), who was tossed from the group after defacing old tunnel art made by Jean-Michel Basquiat, and are led by the sociopathic Tod (Nicholas Hamilton), who doesn’t give a damn about an urbex get. He wants the money, and will kill to get it.
The cast is now gathered, and The Scavengers are not the only threat in the hotel. There is some Lovecraftian stuff going on, including a book of spells and a mutated man-monster (Javier Botet). The characters get separated, come together, separate some more, and engage in cat and mouse shenanigans with the creature. It’s boilerplate stuff, but it has pacing decent enough to be entertaining.
The hotel setting is neat, as the movie was filmed on location at the National Palace of Culture in Sofia, Bulgaria. Completed in 1981, the Palace is a stately pile of late communist/modernist architecture, and has quite a grandiose interior. It’s definitely not a hotel, though. What will really strike a viewer about the setting is how it was lit. This movie takes place at night, and the majority of the lighting comes from indeterminate sources. It’s also very dark, and is obviously something that was done in post-production. Everything has a washed out and fuzzy look, and I wonder why Klasfeld and cinematographer Yon Thomas didn’t just have the characters’ flashlights as the lighting. Urbexers always carry flashlights.
The curious lighting isn’t a big deal when the rest of the package is so mediocre. This is the kind of horror flick that will scratch an itch for an hour and a half, but by bedtime one might have trouble remembering what they just watched. There is a monster, a bunch of fodder, and a hotel that, for some reason, they can’t seem to bring themselves to leave. It’s got a front door. Use it. Do Not Enter settles firmly into the mediocre middle of the Watchability Index, displacing All the Kind Strangers at #311. Meh.