Two roommates' lives are upended after discovering
​a dark secret in their new Manhattan apartment.

HORROR

The Scary of Sixty-First (2021)

Directed by Dasha Nekrasova 

Written by Dasha Nekrasova and Madeline Quinn 

Starring Madeline Quinn, Betsey Brown, Dasha Nekrasova,
Mark H. Rapaport

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Caleb Leger

March 10, 2022

1/10

Believe it or not, I try really hard to not hate a film I watch. Especially a low budget one which I haven’t really heard of before. But, sometimes, as the movie keeps going and there is nothing I’m latching onto to enjoy, it gets difficult. Especially when the film at hand decides to go less with smart and thoughtful social commentary; instead yelling at the audience for whatever social agenda the filmmaker is pushing or indulge greatly in conspiracy theories as the main plot point. The Scary of Sixty-First goes for the latter. And with nothing else to make it worth watching if the main plot is hard for you to get into. This is where I ended up finding The Scary of Sixty-First landing squarely in.  
 
The aforementioned conspiracy theory: the suicide of Jeffrey Epstein. Sorry, the murder for some people out there. Look, to this day, Final Destination 3’s need to insert a photo of the 9/11 bombings in relation to the main plot sticks out like a sore thumb in an otherwise incredibly fun entry. For this movie, the Epstein conspiracy is the driving force of the plot and demonic possession. It is the entire film. This only creates something which isn’t all that fun to watch for its plot and can only successfully alienate some of your audience. Now, some of this could be forgivable if there was anything else to write home about. There isn’t, though. It’s been a while since I’ve seen acting this bad. There’s not a single good performance to be found. To make matters worse, none of the characters are even likable. There is also an incredible lack of want to tie things up by film’s end.  
 
I don’t want to beat a dead horse too much here. At the end of the day, the filmmakers got a film made. But their decision to play up a rather stupid conspiracy and have nothing else good to overshadow it just leads to an incredibly dull and hard film to get through.