Closed for the Season

Kept hoping it'd get better but the first 5 minutes pretty much tell you how interesting the whole movie is going be. The boring just never ends. It just goes on, and on, and on. Occasionally the boring gets spiced up with some confusing, some irrelevant, and some totally lame CGI. The story makes little sense, the actors are terrible and the plot is retarded. It keeps jumping around from one strange (and still boring) scene to another as if whoever wrote it, simply made it up as they went along, hoping to make a quick buck. Pathetic. Boring. You don't even care how it ends or what happens to any of the characters. I couldn't wait for it to hurry up and end. If you have absolutely nothing better to do and someone else paid for it - meh, go ahead and waste your time. Otherwise - avoid.

A young woman and a man (Aimee Brooks and Damian Maffei) find themselves stuck at Chippewa Lake Park that's been closed for decades, but terrorizes them with haunting memories.

"Closed for the Season" (2010) was written, scored and directed by Jay Woelfel at the cost of only $250,000. I saw his previous full-length movie, "Ghost Lake," from six years earlier, which cost way less, $110,000, and I wanted to see what he could do with over twice the budget. Well, this is noticeably better on a technical level, and is impressive from that angle, but he omitted the most important part, a compelling story.

I was interested in seeing it because you can't beat the carnival atmosphere. And the dilapidated location makes it all the better, sort of like "Scream Park" that came out two years later and was shot in northwest Pennsylvania's Conneaut Lake Park. That flick is worth seeing since it has a coherent story that holds your interest. Not so here, unhappily.

Yet if you have a penchant for artsy indies or are interested in what Chippewa Lake Park looks like after being closed for 31 years, when shooting was done in 2009, you'll find something to appreciate. It was a happening place in the Roaring 20s.

The film's overlong at 1 hour, 54 minutes, and was shot at Chippewa Lake Park, which is located 27 miles west of Akron and 5 miles northwest of Seville.

GRADE: C-/D+

Not the worst horror film I've ever seen but not for lack of trying. Being a long-time fan of horror movies as well as circus and carnival thrillers, I was looking forward to enjoying a feature combining the best of both worlds minus perhaps the extreme surrealism of Alex de la Iglesia's "The Last Circus". This one, unfortunately, failed to deliver at any level. Had I been shackled before the screen, I would have seriously considered chewing off a leg to escape the very real horror of a complete and utter waste of film stock. Here's hoping the wonderfully spooky atmosphere of Chippewa Lake Park will one day serve as locale for a well-executed and memorable fright film. Closed for the Season? Closed for a reason.

Closed for the Season aka Carnival of Fear offers something that seems more like a feverdream, a stream of consciousness excursion into fear that gets rather muddled in the second and third acts. Director Jay Woelfel has to be given credit for trying to create an alternate universe where fear and regret exist tangibly and haunt the lives of the characters. Yes, it's a very slow burn, but it's fascinating. Woelfel has helmed many films, mostly in the horror and action genres, so it's interesting to see this approach. It's also understandable that so many reviewers would hate this movie--it's not a "gotcha" horror movie. Other reviewers have compared it to "Malatesta's Carnival of Blood", which has a very dreamlike, metaphysical feel to it. In some ways, it also resembles Herk Harvey's "Carnival of Souls", although that film has a very clear-cut rationale that is revealed at the end. Both films are exceptional in their use of cinematography to set an eerie mood. The whole idea of a closed amusement park being a receptacle for the negative energy produced by human suffering is a great metaphor, and Woelfel tries to layer on other ideas as well, but it seems like too many metaphysical concepts spoil the broth. If you like your horror with a lot of esoteric philosophical concepts drenched in atmosphere, then this one might be for you.

A girl wakes up into a dilapidated amusement park and seems to drift from nightmare to nightmare until she meets the caretaker of the park, who's willing to anchor her back to reality. But the nightmare doesn't end that easily and the newly-found couple are haunted and pursued by the ghosts of the park, including the Monster from the Lake, the Alligator and most of all, Carny, who holds the key to their escape.

The 1st five minutes firmly establish a dreamlike quality, an ethereal half-sleep that holds on until the very last reel. For once, the CGI helps more than hinder, giving the effects an old Hollywood magic. Still, the strength of "CFTS" is that it never drifts into complete absurdity, even at its most awkward. Each kooky segment leads to the final revelation, which of course is love.

There's enough humor, grue & thrills to keep the unprepared audience satisfied, and those that are willing to take the plunge will be taken for a creepy and poetic ride.