Everfall

I found this at a Dollar Tree and was pulled in by the cover, which is pretty cool, though the back shows one person with a knife and another with a rifle for some reason (note: there are no knives or rifles in the film, lol).

So, the setup is good, building tension with Daniel's extreme video series. It grows a little muddy after protagonist Eva falls during a skating tryout, and then it reveals she's injured. Turns out this injury is from another, earlier time.

This telegraphs some issues with the story throughout - namely that a bit too much is left to mystery, hoping to fill viewers in later. Normally, this is fine, but occasionally here it ends up just confusing. For example: who's the little girl that pops up every now and then? Still not sure. Is the skater who died there the same as the current event organizer and the shapeshifter witch lady? I think so.

On the upside, the dialog is well done for a lower-budget project. I seldom felt like people were speaking out of character or ruining immersion (save for the firefighter telling his guys to stay and then yelling at them to leave to comical effect).

The CGI was quite good for this level, as well. In fact, I'd have leaned even more on it. That is, some of the effects that were based on set design would have been better suited as CGI. For example, I didn't really buy that the rink looked burned down from the odd charcoal coloring on the walls, but perhaps CGI could have more accurately conveyed this impression.

Another positive is that it never tried to be anything other than a horror film. Each element of the story was clearly there to up the tension and build the horror. It didn't always work, but at least it didn't feel meandering in that regard.

As with many lower-budget horror films, a tighter edit in post, where the editor was willing to scrap visual cues that just weren't working, would have bumped it another star.

The few times I enjoyed the movie are so outweighed by my confusion. What video? Did she jump? Are there twins? OMG WTF? Glad it was free.

Took the gamble of watching it since this platform can be notorious for low reviews.

I did not find it slow and it kept my interest as to what would happen next. The Twist at the end explain a key issue in the story. After that in the last few minutes it went downhill. Without giving the story away lets just say one of the lead characters did something very improbable.

Not interesting enough to me to research more about it.

This movie was so bad that even my OPINION of it went straight to video.

Okay, so we get the idea that the protagonists are living some sort of hallucinatory fantasy about true love can get you through the final barrier between truth and falsehood and how we are all haunted about decision made or not made in life. I think the writer has some talent, certainly more than the actors do. I mark this as 80+ minutes of my life I can't get back. And that is the true haunting horror of this flick.

By the way, I noticed during the credits crawl that one the people whose pictures are displayed on the "Wall of Champions" included a Kristen Welker. One question I would like to have answered is was this Kristen Welker from NBC News; the reporter who's a regular contributor to the various MSNBC cable shows?