Revenant

"An American Ghost Story" is a film about a couple who move into a supposedly haunted house where a family had been killed years before. The main character is an aspiring writer that wants to write a book about and paranormal activity he may experience in the house.

I would give this one a 6 1/2. If you are looking for top Hollywood style horror you probably would skip this one. IMDb has this one listed with an estimated budget of around $10k, That being said it did get the best bang for the budget, and beats out a lot of movies with much loftier budgets. I give it a 6 and not in a bad way.

The script was pretty weak, and the dialog at times was just plain bad. The effects were decent. There was some "make you jump" moments. All in all, if you are into low budget films not too bad. Derek Cole, the Director deserves some props for putting this out on the shoe-string budget, and given a robust one could most likely turn out some good movies in the future.

My husband and I enjoy horror movies and can only watch the great and good ones so many times. In our 50's we have also exhausted the viewing of OK ones as well. So we started watching ones we have never heard of and frequently have to turn them off because they are just....soooo....bad.

We had pretty low expectations because the casting was by one of the actors who was also one of the producers. The writing was not great and some of those supporting actors were terrible (Sorry "landlord" but the untucked shirt and accent was pretty bad.)

However, the acting from the main character and the two featured women was pretty good and at times, great. The movie had quite a few scares that make me jump.

While this isn't going to be your go-to ghost story, it was definitely worth watching if you have been through all the studio released files.

This was definitely a pleasant surprise after some of my latest endeavors into the horror/thriller genre, yes it is a fairly low budget movie and one writer of the story was the star and the other was the producer and his family played parts in the movie and also used his house as the setting but this put plenty of big budget attempts to shame. The story revolves around Paul who moves into an apparent haunted house for research for a book, yes nothing original there but it works. His girlfriend doesn't last long living there but she probably lasted longer than most of us would have, but Paul decides to stick it out in an attempt to make contact to get that winning edge for his book. After almost 3 months things certainly start to turn and despite my slight disappointment in the confrontation as I think it could have been done differently,credit has to go to the creators of this for a pretty good effort. There were those jumping moments and those moments where you are saying "don't be an idiot, just leave it alone" but to me, those are the things you want from these type of movies and I really liked the way they went about this one as sometimes less is more. I would recommend this to those who like me have been disappointed with a lot of these types of movies and those that enjoy these types of movies. 8/10

I feel bad, because i watched this movie and thought it was no good in any way, shape or form.

However... i cut the guys some slack. Because, i read they made it for $2,000. That's less than i've seen people ask for on crowd funding websites for a YouTube video.

Here's the thing though. The audience doesn't know the budget of a movie when they chose to watch it on Netflix. The thumbnail for the movie looks alright. How do you know it will be 1000x less impressive than something like "The Collection?" You don't. It's not the fault of these guys just trying to make a movie with some friends and a couple thousand dollars. I guess i'm more upset at Netflix recommending it right on my front page like i'll enjoy it because i watched "The Collection."

Well, "Revenant" (aka "An American Ghost Story") isn't likely to knock "Poltergeist" of the throne in the haunting/ghost genre. So was it a bad movie? No, I wouldn't exactly call it bad, I would merely call it mediocre and rather uneventful compared to other movies in the haunting/ghost genre.

The story in "Revenant" is about a couple moving into an allegedly haunted house where a man killed his wife, his children and then taking his own life. There is an oppressive tension in the house as they spend their first night there. Slowly, but gradually, more things start to happen, and as the events escalates, it becomes too much for Stella (played by Liesel Kopp) and she leaves Paul (played by Stephen Twardokus) in the house alone. Determined to research into the subject more thoroughly for his book, Paul starts to get into contact with the spirits that is haunting the house.

For a haunting/ghost movie there weren't really anything overly impressive about the movie. There were no dazzling CGI effects. Sure, this was a fairly low budget, and I will say that director Derek Cole actually managed to pull it off quite nicely with the budget. The effects were actually quite good, despite not being those dazzling CGI effects. I especially enjoyed the scene with the bed sheet where Paul was trying to find the haunt in the living room.

There were some good shocks in the movie, not because they were ghastly or creepy, but because they were nicely timed with the build up and the music/sound effects. You will not be scared senseless after having seen the movie, but your heart will skip a beat or two along the way.

Storywise, then "Revenant" wasn't particularly impressive, and it did survive given the build up of suspense and thrills with some great climatic shocks, and also a good music score. But storywise, then it was generic and stereotypical for the haunting/ghost genre.

As far as character build and development goes, then this movie only concentrated about the Paul character. Stella came and went in the blink of an eye, and I wonder how come she didn't call Paul back as she said she would. I was waiting for her to return throughout the entire movie. But she just didn't do so.

And if you are in a haunted house and spooky things are happening around you, why don't you just use common sense and turn on the light in the room? But no, apparently the Paul character didn't possess that kind of logical thinking, better to stumble around in the darkness when there was a malignant entity in the house as well. That just makes sense.

"Revenant" is good fun for an evening where you watch some ghost movies, however, the movie just doesn't have the contents to support more than a single viewing.