Preston Castle

Hello, I am the Prime Minister. Today I will tell you about this movie.

It is not good. I like horror movies, even the ones that are so bad they become hilarious. This is not one of those movies.

The premise of this movie is that 1 college chick is trying to get her best friend hooked up with this college guy after a breakup. They hang out for a few seconds at a lake and then he drives them over to a spooky place so they can spook each other. However, the best friend is only there to bone him and the 1 college chick doesn't even want to be there at all.

None of them act like real humans do. Yes, there are many moments where there is clearly just bad acting, but also the personality given to these characters is flat and not relatable.

The horror is so bad I cringed a few times, but other times I put my face in my palms. The only people who would be convinced by this are little children. The actors do not know how to portray fear, and certainly do not know how to act like someone is dying. The only person dying here is me, from how bad this is.

In my book, the only criteria for a good horror movie is actors who know how to portray a frightened human who is fearing for their life. Fear is a very powerful emotion, which this movie mocks.

This is also NOT a Found Footage movie. FFs are my favorite sub-genre, however the "Camera" parts are just a girl who can't afford a cell phone for Snapchat. It adds nothing to the movie experience and doesn't even need to be there.

Also, this movie is made up of poorly- shot jump scares that you can see coming from a kilometer away. I even started counting the seconds in-between jump scares. If you made this into a drinking game, you would drown. My profile picture is the face I often made while watching the scenes. Please, I pray for you and your eyes.

This movie completely flattens anything unique. "A haunting In Preston Castle" is a boring, uneventful wreck that takes on any cliché; executing every cliché in the book ..

I think I'll go only good thing of this film, that being the acting. I think, personally, acting of a horror film is what ticks me off the most when I'm watching a film. In this film, the acting wasn't that bad, actually. I felt as if the actors kept a steady, solid grip to they're characters, displaying some great acting performances. However, during some scenes of the film, the actors over played they're lines, acting as if they were rushed, or perhaps persuaded to go faster. Point being, the acting wasn't bad at all, it was solid, and it held together.

Now for the horrific parts of the film, the story / plot.. One word. Recycled. The plot was horrifically clichéd, and emphasized so many millions, and billions of times before its sickening. This film just preforms the exact same thing once more, only some how making it seem worse then it already is. A group of idiot teens head off into an abandoned, haunted area of which posses a ghost legend; Which, by the way was completely left out of the movie, leaving a major plot hole. The movie literally sends these nuisance characters into this haunted area for absolutely no reason, making the entire thing a massive blur, leading to the audiences' annoyance. In conclusion, the plot is an overused subject, annoying the audience with the fact it's been seen billions of times before, only displaying a waste of time; a cliché.

Now, the ghosts of the movie. The monsters, the part of the film that can't possibly fail! Of course, in this situation, it did. The ghost was flopped around as a transparent looking CGI glob of crap. And even with that statement bring brought up, in this film, you never really even see the ghost, because how horrifically BORING this film was. And even when us audience did, it was lame, and didn't phase the audience as the looks of it just had us wondering "Why?" or . . "What!?" in the end, the scariest part of the film was supposedly the ghosts, but fell flat in even achieving that, instead failing it.

In conclusion this film was a wreck, it introduced us to the wide world of clichés, of which is a world we shouldn't visit. It not only did that, but also disappointed the audience with lame executions of scares, scenery, and events. On top of all that, this film was bland, and uneventful, It wasted much time with boring convocations and fell flat to be a horrifically boring waste. Even the decent acting couldn't save this film; I don't recommend this to any horror fan, as you'll be highly disappointed. Finally, I don't HATE this film, rather, I'm very disappointed with it, and I feel as if others will be too.

Unfortunately, this effort at horror has to be one of the most inconsistent horror movies I've seen in the past couple of years.

The lead actress's character is the worst of all the inconsistencies. One moment she wants to get out of the place without her friend, then when the "boyfriend" decides they should get out, she wants to find her friend and nothing will stop her from searching for her.

Things just go down hill after that as it becomes a parade of clichés and horror movie tropes handled poorly

Frankly, I've seen this movie before and it has been done better.

Spend your time watching something.

Martin Rosenberg and co-writer Peter Bailey give a great ghost story using a very creepy, and spooky urban legend, and real life scene of tragedy as the location for "A Haunting At Preston Castle". The story arc, back story, and characters are well developed, even though they are your standard tropes. This is an indie horror so the film quality, although above most low budget horror, is stripped down. It is also a well produced horror with most of the scenes playing out in convincing manner, with creepy, shadowy backgrounds, typical spooky sounds and expected cheap, shock-thrill effects for sudden scares. The cast give authentic, fully committed performances of the three teens fated to fall victim to one evil, vengeful spirit. Of course the real star of "A Haunting At Preston Castle" is the real life tragedy of this haunted location-Preston Castle.

The effects are standard, low-key visual effects and spook gimmicks like falling objects, creepy sounds and characters that seem to freak out uncontrollably over everything! The CGI ghost effects are disappointing, and the entity doesn't spend nearly enough time on screen. The death scenes are pretty much off camera and only revealed during, high emotion, theatrical moments that give the last character standing some real horror to freak out over. Most things are cookie cutter moments that only give small amounts of chills and thrills. The film does have a nice pace that builds some suspense but the pay off isn't quite intense enough to give any real fright- filled moments.

Overall "A Haunting At Preston Castle" only offers a slightly above par horror movie experience. Everything is all been seen and done many- many times before, and we don't get the pleasure of seeing the kills take place. Bummer! Still it is a cool story, on level with past paranormal horrors such as "Boo" and "Death Tunnel". Plus the whole story around Preston Castle and the urban legends that formed after the tragic events is a great vehicle for this traditional 'ghost adventure gone wrong' tale. Even though the ghost is a weak and under-used part of this ghost story and you can guess just how the film will end long before the last act, "A Haunting At Preston Castle" is a nice spooky time killer.

Actually, why did we come here in the first place? Oh yeah, for no real reason at all. Apart from the fact that we wanted to film everything and leave the footage for someone to edit ... wait! Ah yes the downfalls of those "Found Footage" movies. And when I say those, I speak of specific ones, not all of them.

But this is a prime example, why the let's call it sub-genre got a bad rep. There are scares thrown in here from time to time and for a low budget movie, they are not that bad. But the question is, if you really care? I don't think you will. And the characters are not even that annoying (all of the time that is) .. let's best forget about it/them ... something already been done by others!