The Black Waters of Echo’s Pond



A group of nine former college friends decide that they’re going to take a little semi-rustic vacation and stay in an old, Victorian home on a private island in Maine. After the power goes out, a search for the fuse box (and some candles) and an accidental fall through the basement stairs leads one of the group to discover a large, ornate box hidden behind a wall. Upon closer inspection the group realizes that it’s a very elaborate board game in which you have to answer questions or complete tasks in order to continue.


I don’t think I’ve ever seen a group of 20-somethings this excited to play a board game.

What none of them realize, however, is that this board game is more than just some elaborate time waster. This is the recreation of “The Rite of Pandemonium”. But it’s not so much a game, as it is an ancient ritual honoring the Pan’s of Ancient Greece that was meant to open a link to the land of Pandemonium, the fabled home of the Pan’s, and the place where demons were said to be entertained by the torture of the damned. The re-creators of this ‘game’ were a group of archeologists from 1927 who all mysteriously wound up dead when their board game proved to be a little too accurately made, causing most of them to go mad and kill one another. An event that sadly repeated itself again in the 50s and 70s. And now that the ‘game’ has been discovered yet again that ritual is getting ready to start a whole new phase.


Goodness, that lighting is NOT flattering to your eyebrows.

To finish off my mini “horror game” marathon this month we have The Black Waters of Echo’s Pond, an American fantasy/horror film from 2009. Echo’s Pond is one of those movies that you watch and just immediately assume that it aired on something like the SYFY channel back in the day. But, surprisingly, it did not. It’s just a small, independent film that really feels like it should have aired on cable. Though not because it was made poorly. Because surprisingly it wasn’t. On a technical level the movie is actually very strong. It sounds good, looks good, occasionally even looks great, and has a lot of blood and even has some decent effects to its name. So clearly some effort was put into this and that means that’s one less thing for me to complain about, which is great. And it even has a relatively decent cast, counting Robert Patrick, James Duval and horror regular Danielle Harris amongst its members. So I can’t even complain about that too much either. Which is also great. What I CAN complain about though, is the story. Because that? That is… not great.



In short, the movie commits two cardinal sins. The first, and most annoying of these, is that much (though not all) of the movie ends up being downright boring. After the nearly 8-minute opening, which briefly covers everything regarding Pandemonium’s backstory and how the board was built and that it caused the players to go insane, the movie then spends the next 40+ minutes focusing on the 9 friends and their rather crappy interpersonal relationships. Now, they actually find the board game 20 minutes into the film, so a full half of that time is spent watching them play the board game and being shockingly honest with their answers, which naturally sometimes leads to sex or discussions about sex, because this is an R rated movie. But mostly it’s just them being really brutally honest with one another (which is actually a stated requirement of the game) when the game gives instructions like “so pick an asshole and tell them how you really feel about them.” Which is really just an excuse for everyone to share all their grievances with one another. Something they do with gusto, and for close to all of those 20-ish minutes. So I suppose that means that besides “Rites of Pandemonium” an alternate title to the game could have easily been TMI: The Game.


It did hit its lesbian quota though, so undoubtedly some pervs in the audience will be happy.

Now, the boredom factor could have been minimized had any of the characters actually been interesting or entertaining in any way. But that brings us to Cardinal Sin #2: All these people SUCK. They’re rude. They’re bitchy. They’re judgemental. Or, in extreme cases, they’re just downright obnoxious. Rick in particular seems to go out of his way to piss everybody off, and the others all but admit that the only reason they keep him around is because he has money. They’re the kind of people where almost all of their interactions with one another make you question how they even tolerate each other, let alone ever liked one another enough to be friends. It’s honestly annoying to watch. And that’s assuming the movie went to the trouble to even give them a personality to begin with. Because while Rick there gets more than his fair share of irritating personality traits to contend with, at least one of them – I think it was Anton – is barely even given anything to say or do beyond the first scene. He’s kinda just…exists for most of the film. So you can tell that he’s really just there to be another eventual auxiliary victim, and the movie really didn’t know what else to do with him.


Dude was so dull I had to look up his name to double check who TF I was thinking about.

Interestingly, the one character the movie goes out of its way to try to shame, probably ends up being the most decent one of the bunch. The film makes fun of Veronique (played by Mircea Monroe) left and right. First they comment on her fake boobs. Then they try to make her seem like a sex craved hussy just because she’s an actress. But really she’s just a very upbeat, sex-positive person who wants everyone to get along. Out of all the characters she’s the only one I felt sorry for, because all she wanted to do was to go away with her friends and have fun for a few days.


If this had been a slightly more modern movie and not so slut-shame-y she may have ended up as the Final Girl.

And just to further add to my annoyances regarding the film’s story, the movie never once goes further in depth regarding Pandemonium (which has nothing to do with Ancient Greece and was actually first coined by John Milton in Paradise Lost from 1667, you obnoxiously inaccurate movie…), or the Pan’s, or anything regarding it that would of course have been remotely interesting. They just dump all that (fake) lore on you at the beginning of the film and then – beyond giving a couple pieces of the board game Greek names and locations – pretty much forget about all it. They never circle back, or let the characters discover anything that could potentially stop this insidious version of Jumanji from Hell that they’re playing. It simply exists. You do THINK they’re going in that direction a few times, because they throw in a couple random scenes of some guy in a goat mask roaming around the island and looking all menacing. But that nonsense is never explained. I think we’re supposed to assume it’s a Pan, or a demon, or the Devil, or…or something. I don’t know. But just like the film’s backstory, it up and disappears at some point, never to be seen or heard from again.


I hope you don’t think any of this is interesting…


…cause it never gets explained.

The one really nice thing in the movie’s favor is that it at least had the budget for some decent effects. There is a little bit of CGI at play, but it ends up being minimal, and thus not that distracting. Which, considering the time frame the film came out, is a very good thing. Instead it mostly sticks to practical effects, which were all very well done. Granted, it took the film a good while to get to all the ooie-gooie bloody parts that most horror fans go searching for. But once you get to the halfway point and the film gets going it does a good job in the blood department. The most impressive effect though is still probably the board game. Because, holly hell, is that set piece intricate. I’m not sure who worked on it, but props to them, because you can tell they spent hours on that thing and it looks great. I’m actually kinda happy we got to see so much of it.


I mean, look at all of those little pieces! This is awesome!




This movie was surprisingly bloody.



Honestly though, I can’t say I’m thrilled with The Black Waters of Echo’s Pond. I kinda liked the idea of an evil Jumanji game, and the backstory regarding it at least sounded interesting. But good gods does the pacing suck. Almost all of the ‘good parts’ are crammed into the second half, forcing us to spend the whole first half with a bunch of annoying, unlikable characters that you can’t wait for the movie to kill off. Once it gets going it’s okay but…eh. I’m not sure it’s worth it. But at least it looks good and has some decent acting, so it’s not all bad. If you like the ‘evil demonic board game’ sub-genre of horror and are tired of Ouija boards then I guess you could give this a go. But I can’t imagine too many other people being that enthused by this.

The Black Waters of Echo’s Pond is available on a variety of streaming services.

The Black Waters of Echo’s Pond is also available on DVD and Bluray (for dirt cheap).

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