Before I even start, here’s the ‘official’ synopsis via Wikipedia:

“Five college girls who were attending an initiation party (themed "Truth or Scare") wake up inside an abandoned sanatorium. They are told (via a speaker system within the sanatorium) that they must spend five hours inside, each on a separate floor. The girls are warned that they must survive five ghosts during the night. Each girl finds newspaper clippings from the 1930s, and they learn that the sanatorium had previously been used during the so-called "White plague," and that thousands died from the disease - while many others killed themselves in the hospital. Although this starts off as prank, both the girls and the prankster find themselves in a fight to prevent history from repeating itself. They discover that there is only one way out of the sanatorium - the tunnel underneath the hospital, nicknamed the "Death Tunnel," as it was used to transport all of the bodies out of the hospital.”

Now, if you’re like me and are into horror movies, you might be a little intrigued by even this cookie cutter plot. Yet, sitting down to watch it the first time I still felt like I was in for a let down. With a cast of actors and actresses I have never heard of before, it was safe to say that the movie would most likely be B-list material. When it started off with a failed photo-shopped montage, I was already feeling the energy being sapped from my inner core. Not even the flashing lights of the asylum cameras/dance club mood lighting could re-fire my dead brain cells… and the horribly dressed girls with bad accents did little for it too.
The first fifteen minutes attempts to set down a plot; albeit one that is completely swiped away like crumbs from a table in the next thirty minutes, and it’s pretty basic: there’s a huge party. It’s at a college. There’s five girls: 2 new girls, 3 (slutty) popular girls. Now, I should point out right now that the main story attempts to focus on the two ‘new girls’… Heather (Steffany Huckaby) and Tori (Annie Burgstede). Heather is the main protagonist who has a flashback of being in a car with her mother in front of the sanatorium, with her mother saying evil things about it before we see her face and it’s rotted away. Hm. She must be important then. Tori, the second protagonist, is a girl from down south and I must say, Ms. Burgstede, you have a horrible southern accent. Tori and Heather stick together for pretty much the whole movie, until the end. Now, back to plot explanation: They all want the same two guys (who happen to be the leaders of the local power-house frat home), who are using the party to scope out voluptuous young women to take advantage of in more ways than one. Would it be bad if I said ‘Here’s your sign’? Sex is the first and most alarming tell-tale sign that you are in a bad horror movie. Hell, including a cast that is supposed to be under the age of 25 but over 18 is a huge sign too. Anyway, I’m off topic…
So, the movie points one thing out right off the bat: it loves loves loves using the ‘montage’ theme to try and confuse its audience. Which, I must say, it does very well. Not in the way it wanted, but it does it. Because of the choppy plot (much like they wanted to film three different movies, but the writer and director were forced to mush it all into one) a montage film was a horrible idea. You keep cutting in between the dance club, the normal college life and a bunch of girls in skimpy nightgowns strapped to beds in filthy rooms crying so fast that the audience is getting vertigo, man!
And yes, I did say girls barely dressed strapped to beds. Now, first the plot attempts to lead us to believe this is all part of a harmless game show called “Truth or Scare”, but honestly it sounds more like kidnap and unlawful distribution of someone’s image. The girls were all drugged and dragged to the asylum, they had no knowledge of the show other than it was ‘sponsoring’ the party along with the frat house. They certainly did not volunteer to be on it. Most of the girls are bawling their eyes out when they wake up, dazed from the roofies and terrified that they can’t see. Yup, I could smell the lawsuits…
But it gets better. We see flashes of a doctor ghost from the more… ’lively’ days of Waverly Hills, complete with creepy gas-mask, looking in on the girls from the windows on the doors. Wow, ghosts in an old broken down building where thousands of people died?! And he was a doctor who did horrible things, like fill people’s lungs with balloons?! And now he’s damned to walk the halls forever?! Golly-gee, you’re so clever!
After this, the whole thing gets pretty blurry. I was half-asleep at 9pm because of how boring it was, honest. As far as I can tell they all start wandering around, getting picked off like fish in a barrel by ghosts that apparently are themselves from 70 years earlier. Heather realizes that she’s the main key and they start finding clues of their ‘past’… the movie attempts to tie in some old legends from Waverly Hills, like that of a nurse who supposedly had a child out of wedlock. It is said that she threw the baby down the asylum well and then hung herself in the door jam of room 502.
There was no more than a few good ‘gross’ out moments, one were one of the girls attempts to shower but instead gets covered in orange slime; and another where one of the male frat boys rescues Heather from the morgue… which is house a dozen dead and mutilated bodies. I managed to pay attention for the last five minutes, and was appalled by what I saw:
Heather and her frat-boy true love make it to the tunnel. The whole way down she is saying “I can’t, I can’t, I have it, I have to help them!” but true love must win! So he drags her whiny ass out side into the sun light, where she magically takes on her appearance of seventy years before. Then, in record time, he goes from “We’re leaving, that’s final!” to “Oh, okay, we have to stay here and DIE. I’m okay with that.” And they hold hands and go back inside. We don’t find out what happened. We never know if the families of these seven or eight missing college students even care that they’re dead. Hell, there’s no mention of what happens to Heather and her boy-toy when they head back in. It pretty much just ends saying “We ran out of time and money, sorry guys.”.
I’m not complaining.
Looking at other reviews of the this film, it seems a majority either got up and left the theater or, after the movie, felt like being sick and demanded a refund. I would have felt the same way… if I had paid for it. It was disrespectful to Waverly Hills Sanatorium in a few ways… it twisted legends, defiled an already dilapidated building and insulted the memory of the thousands that died there with a cheap plot.
If I was a ghost there, I’d haunt Mr. Booth for making such crap.

More on Death Tunnel

More on Waverly Hills

And for those who want to see the trailer