100 Ghost Street - The Return of Richard Speck

Like so many of these movies, it was made on a way to low of budget, with no talent whatsoever. The idea is sound, of course, lock a crew in a hospital, of course over night, of course with a ghost the loose, and of course nobody believes in ghosts. The acting was super horrible, the plot I liked, but the whining of the actors made me want to turn it off. Round and round in circles it felt this movie went, most of it wasn't believable but hey, these movies aren't supposed to win Academy Awards now are they? I wouldn't watch this movie if unless if you really had to, or if you are like and love these types of movies, its a definite watch!

The first rule of reviewing 'found footage' horror films is to take them for what they are. So, I review this in the context of the sub-genre only and not in the wider context of film generally.

The found footage genre is massively over-saturated with poor quality films. When done right, these films are fantastically scary (Blair Witch etc). I have watched over 30 of these films and, bearing in mind this film is only a year old, my only reaction is 'why was this film even made?'. It offers absolutely nothing new whatsoever, and trots out the same clichés as most other of these films (scary abandoned property, investigated at night, shaky camera work, annoying characters etc etc). Although it is no worse than many other found footage films, those other films came first and so it is up to newer films to expand on and develop the genre - this film totally fails to do that.

The one positive for me was that I thought the acting was a lot better than usual. I'm not talking about great acting as such, just appropriate acting for this type of film.

Yet another poor addition to the pool, for die-hard found footage fans only, and even those people will wonder why they bothered watching.

"100 Ghost Street" is a found footage paranormal flick from The Asylum. It is told through recovered documentary video footage retrieved from the stories set location. A team of paranormal researchers head out to record any phenomena where the infamous killer Richard Speck murdered several people. The film stars Jennifer Robyn Jacobs, Jim Shipley, Tony Besson, Jackie Moore, and Hayley Derryberry.

"100 Ghost Street" begins just as most of these found footage paranormal ghost stories do by setting up the story with video sequences that conveniently introduce the location and purpose of the visit. In this case a documentary investigating the paranormal activity at the scene of grisly murders committed by Richard Speck who along with his victims is said to still be haunting the location. There is nothing that really sticks out in this film as groundbreaking or original but it is a pretty good movie. The story is believable and comprehensible. The action begins almost immediately and convincingly. The special effects in this film is standard play in this subgenre and is done very well. There is plenty of gory death scenes and melodramatic acting from the cast. The scares are not so much instantaneous or shocking but the whole film is pretty entertaining.

There is really nothing in this film that stands out as nail biting or 'edge of your seat chills' but the film manages to keep you interested by showing a steady amount of action and drama. I actually found it to be a very enjoyable paranormal film that brought the blood and gore. The effects are not high end but they are better than a lot of the films in this subgenre of horror. If your looking for sudden chills or scare moments that make you jump then look elsewhere, but that aside it is a very good ghost story. The atmosphere is creepy, the location is dark and the story behind the paranormal activity is gruesome. I think any paranormal movie fan will be pleased to see this film.

In 2010, paranormal investigators tried to film Richard Speck's ghost at the site of his heinous killing spree. The victims' families have finally released the footage that documents their last days.

This is yet another found footage and pseudo-documentary film, which nobody demanded. The only person of note in it is Jackie Moore, who has appeared in the Maxim Top 100 and in another Asylum film, "Atlantic Rim". Most people probably have no idea who she is.

This is apparently the fourth installment in the "Paranormal Activity" copycat series, "Paranormal Entity". The title does not make this evident, and near as can be found, there is no need to watch any of the previous entries.

Scott Foy of Dread Central rated it 3/5 stars and called it the best found footage film made by The Asylum. Now, that may be so, but even if it is, "the best" of anything from The Asylum is still not great. Foy was being much too generous. But at least it was not made by Ulli Lommel, who would have made it terrible.

What happened to the last 84 minutes of my life?

What happened to filmmaking standards?

What happened to hope?

One thing that The Asylum films pretty much has going for it is consistency. 100 Ghost Street: The Return of Richard Speck is an Asylum film in every way - but sadly, that's not a compliment. As far as found footage films go, this is one of the worst that I've had the misfortune of seeing.

And I'm easy.

The setup is similar to what we're accustomed to in films of this ilk, so I can't actually take any points away for that. The technical aspects of the film follows time-worn convention; it's pretty much what you'd expect to see for a micro-budget film of this particular sub- genre. Low light, jerky camera movements, and poor sound. Again, no surprises there.

Where this film really excels at ineptitude is in the low level of acting involved and in its extremely poor storytelling. For 3/4 of the film's running time, viewers are treated to excessive yelling, frantic posturing and hysterical emotional bursts from an earnestly amateurish cast. Bad acting has been a staple of this type of film since Blair Witch, so I for one, EXPECT it. However, it's the LAST 1/4 of the film that really bites; the actors collectively go into this whole other realm of over-emoting that I've rarely ever seen outside of a badly- directed grade school stage play.

Please people, for God's sake, take more acting classes. Improvisation is an art; please take it seriously. And if you know what's good for your "career", I'd suggest steering clear of films produced under the Asylum banner. Clearly, no good can come of it.

The atrocious acting in this film is outdone only by the extremely lazy storytelling which has characters making the stupidest choices possible and taking the most inexplicable courses of action. Repeatedly.

Finally (just because a lack of accuracy happens to be a pet peeve of mine), I'd give this film a huge "fail" in the research department. For the record, the building where the actual murders of the nurses took place was in a townhouse. Also, in actuality, Richard Speck killed 8 nurses in that townhouse, not 7 which this film repeatedly and erroneously mentions. The manner in which Speck's original victims were killed is also misrepresented in this film. There are more factual errors that I could mention, but chances are, you already get the picture. For future, it'd be nice if writers who work on dreck like this would actually take the time to at least get facts right, so here's a little shout-out to all those inspiring, creatively-deficient screenwriters out there that intend on tackling real-life events: it's not that difficult - Wikipedia is only a few mouse clicks away and it's freely available to anyone.