American Poltergeist

I literally signed up on my phone. Found out I couldn't do it on my phone. Got my laptop loaded up and went through the silly confirmation e-mails to write this review. This is film is so bad that it makes porn films look like Spielberg. Whoever wrote the dialog must have been some kind of Stephanie Mayer type because they clearly have never interacted with another human and can only imagine what young, attractive people might actually say to each other. The whole thing was about as interesting as watching the Kardashians while they watch paint dry with someone attempting badly to scary clown in the back ground. I love horror, I even like bad cliché horror for laughs but this was neither. Its not scary. Its not even funny scary. Important plot points are just blurted out by the wooden characters without any build up to a discovery leaving you bored and uninterested. The camera work is so dodgy that you could mute it and put on pornography scores and pretend that you were actually watching some. Wouldn't recommend at all. Not even for "so bad its good".

If you are hoping for a proper ghost movie, as I did given the "American Poltergeist" title, then you will be sorely disappointed. However, if you are looking for a pseudo-slasher movie with a woman in an old dress and lousy green make-up on her face, then this is exactly what you are looking for.

Story-wise, then "American Poltergeist" (aka "The House of Lizzie Borden") was just about as generic and predictable as they come in the haunted horror genre. Only a few paranormal things happened in the house, which seemed okay and to slowly build up to something bigger, but then Lizzie Borden manifested in the shape of a woman in an old dress and with very questionable make-up. And then the movie just fell apart. And it got especially wonderful when a non-clergyman started to perform an exorcism.

For a horror movie the only thing scary was the lack of anything even remotely spooky, scary or disturbing.

Well, I wasn't fully honest there. There is one scary thing, and that was the acting of Donna Spangler. Apparently she thinks that moving, speaking and basically doing everything in such a slow pace, that is best described as a drug-induced stupor, is considered acting. It was so painful to witness. All she did was essentially just amplifying the stupidity of the movie.

"American Poltergeist" was a disappointment of unfathomable proportions. And I should have seen it coming, as the reviewers either all really loved or hated the movie; there seemed to be no middle ground. I, if you haven't guessed it already, is of the latter option.

If you enjoy a proper horror and/or haunting movie, then you shouldn't watch this particular movie.

At first I thought I was still on Pornhub. From the very beginning, the acting, dialogues, sound and filming were all ridiculously amateurish and tacky. The wanna-be actors couldn't even walk naturally, less alone talk. The sound changes from scene to scene and you could even see the boom mic at one time. The makeup artists transformed what was to be a scary mannequin into a sad grotesque clown and Donna Spangler, who plays the villain, should be banned from ever appearing on camera (I doubt anyone who has seen 5 minutes if this movie would ever cast her anyway). This piece of wasted film roll deserves to be shown to arts students to let them know exactly what not to do.

Have you ever watched Mystery Science Theater 2000? This movie should be featured on that show.

However, as much crap as we talked while watching this movie, we watched the entire thing without turning it off. And then immediately clicked to watch American Poltergeist 2 because we thought it was a continuation of the first. Lol.

The acting overall was as if all of the actors were new, I was surprised to see they were in other movies. The overall story line could have worked if there had been better acting and better direction. But yet... we still watched...

The horror genre is my favorite, but I don't know why after seeing so many bad horror movies. They say you have to watch a lot of bad ones to find a real gem. Well, this is one of the bad ones I watched trying to find myself a gem.

The cinematography was pretty good, considering it's low-budget, and that's about the only thing I'll say was good about this movie. The acting was about what you'd expect from one of these low-budget indie horror films. Unfortunately, so was the story. It was silly enough that it takes place in the house where Lizzie Borden killed her parents. And then they have one of the girls ask who Lizzie Borden was. Another girl says "Give her a break. She's a west coast girl." No, she's not a west coast girl. She's a stupid girl.

They didn't kill anyone until about 57 minutes into the movie. Considering the movie is 79 minutes long - and not very good - that's a long time to wait for people to start getting killed, and a lot of the victims appeared in the movie about 5 minutes before that.

I've seen worse, but that doesn't excuse this mess. I gave this a 3-star rating. I like originality, which this movie was, but just because something is original doesn't mean it's going to be good, as this movie is not.

When Lizzie Borden took an axe I wish she gave this movie 40 whacks.