Sarah Landon and the Paranormal Hour

released with no publicity or anything a few weeks back I saw this on a couple of movie Marquees and went to investigate. Family friendly (they hoped) TV movie about a 17 or 18 year old girl going to visit the family of a deceased childhood friend. There she runs into a mystery involving ghosts and a death curse. My notes from this are sketchy, mostly scribbles about how Rissa Walters as Sarah can't act. To be certain she looks good but its all over once she opens her mouth.The real question I seemed to have was how this ever got any sort of theatrical release, even one that rivals the release of Terry Jones Wind and the Willows (Then again this has some promotional material,I remember a poster, wind in the willows didn't). A waste of time. Lets hope the promise of a series of Sarah Landon films never is fulfilled.

Hackneyed storytelling and insipid performances are the hallmarks of "Sarah Landon and the Paranormal Hour," an amateur-hour supernatural thriller that has all the professionalism and polish of an F-earning junior high school film project.

Sarah (Rissa Walters) is a 17-year-old girl who goes to stay with her recently deceased best friend's grandmother in a small mountain town in California. The minute she arrives at the place, she's plunged into a mind-numbing mystery story involving curses, avenging spirits, and a whole raft of poorly staged flashback sequences.

The actors read their lines as if they'd never performed for an audience before, either on stage or in front of a camera – which may indeed be the case with some of them – and Lisa Comrie demonstrates no more confidence as a director than the performers do as actors.

"Paranormal Hour" was the first in what was intended to be a series of mystery films with the Nancy Drew-like Sarah Landon character as the protagonist. Fortunately, given everything that it's had to put up with lately, the world was at least spared that fate.

We were truly disappointed with this film. Our expectations weren't high. We were just looking for something to see with our nine year old daughter. Frankly, it fell short of the quality of one of the old ABC after school specials. We certainly didn't have high expectations While the plot had some possibilities, the acting was laughably bad. This was especially true of Brian Comrie who played David Baker. My nine year old daughter said that it was the worst movie she had every seen. The only redeeming quality was that it was bad enough to be somewhat funny. If you are a teen/tween and you want to see a movie that you and your friends can laugh at then consider this one. Otherwise, save your money and see something else.

It was nice to see a movie that a family can watch together.We enjoyed it,though we expected something else.Take the kids to see this one.Rarely does a movie like this come to the big screen (a "scary" movie that the whole family can enjoy).But,if you're an adult without kids you would probably rather go see something else.Judge for yourselves.Well,not much else I can say without ruining it.OH-the acting was TERRIBLE,but I still think that was forgivable since this is such a rare opportunity to see a "scary" movie that is NOT too scary for any age.It was truly refreshing for a family that doesn't allow the kids to watch inappropriate content.

I was looking for something to watch that wouldn't require too much thought, something quick and fun, nothing too complicated. When I saw the 3/10 rating on IMDb, I almost didn't watch the movie. In the end, I still did, and I'm glad I did. It was nothing special, but I wanted to be entertained, and that's exactly what the movie did. Nothing less, nothing more.

As other people have mentioned, the movie is like a cross between Nancy Drew and a Goosebump episode. It's filmed cheaply, with unknown actors that don't deliver any ground-breaking performances, but the script is well put together and interesting. The intrigue is surprisingly captivating, and there are no slow parts, resulting in a fast-paced movie where you don't really have time to be bored or annoyed.

The 'horror' parts of the movie are extremely cliché, and somewhat funny because they fail to surprise, but for younger kids this is just enough, more would be too much. Everything falls into place a bit too easily during the movie and the ending is ridiculous, but until that point the unfolding of the story is great, if kept in mind that this is a thriller/mystery for children. The ending supposes there will be a continuation, and I do hope so.

It's fun to watch, just don't expect more than it is.