friendofdavid

The reviews were so good, I figured this one was going to be exceptional. Oops, I keep forgetting that I rarely, if ever, agree with reviews, especially from critics.

This movie was not scary. The locations were minimal, sparse, and poorly presented and represented, so it was a bit difficult to achieve any semblance of immersion and find any sort of depth in the story. As my wife said, it was kind of flat.

So where did all these excellent reviews come from? I have no idea. Were they watching the same movie I watched? I don't think so. This movie required much more than it gave us to tell this story, and failed because of it. Waste of time, sadly.

I am a seasoned paranormal investigator, so I have quite a bit of credibility on the subject this movie failingly attempts to cover. In an investigation, especially one that is being filmed and put out to the public, you want to total up the time of your presentation, and then split it into thirds, so as not to bore the holy crap out of your audience. Let's look at the breakdown in thirds:

1. (First 1/3) Present your investigation into the history of the haunting and anything that might have led to said haunting, e.g., house built on or near a graveyard, nearby war location, native American-Indian burial site, murder(s), suicide(s), maltreatment, or other traumatic human torture or brutalization at the site, etc.

2. (Second 1/3) Having the evidence, discuss your approach with the viewer. Make it interactive, as if they are going to be investigating with you. Break the third wall! For instance, do your initial walkthrough on camera while speaking to the viewer about your findings and how they coincide with the plans you have devised for your forthcoming investigation.

3. (Third 1/3) This part can be a little longer than just 1/3, maybe overlapping some of the time used for the second 1/3. This is the bread and butter of the investigation, and it's what you want to spend the most time on. This is what people came to see!

In this documentary, about ten to fifteen minutes were spent actually investigating. What a let-down! What a bunch of nonsense! Also, the people who claimed to be "mediums" were nowhere close to being such. It was easy to tell they were acting (badly) and lying. "Colored hair" hadn't a clue what she was doing. The other one was so unbelievable that I have already forgotten what she said, or even looked like, and I only watched this three days ago.

You can give this nonsense a wide berth. It's simply a very poorly done paranormal investigation that could have been so, SO much better!

3. (Third.

IDEA: Instead of churning out 27 movies per year, how about saving your money and putting it all into one AWESOME movie over the course of six - twelve months? I know, that's a lot to think about, but the quality of your films, not to mention, your reputation, will soar to new heights! This is what you can do with all the money you have saved:

1. Invest in some paint for your walls. Go to a Savers store or a Goodwill and get some inexpensive furniture and wall hangings to build some nice sets that fit the story, instead of filming everything in your backyard or in the middle of nowhere.

2. Get yourself some sliders and dollies to escape "shaky-cam" syndrome! Spend the time to set them up to make a world of difference!

3. Spend some money on a skilled editor and colorist! Those washed out scenes look like crap! Really ... don't cut corners here! Multifaceted software and the people skilled to use it will create a paradise of eye candy, which shall, in turn, make your film stand out from the rest of the heap as not being part of said heap.

4. Audio is huge and, many times, especially in low budget film-making, overlooked in lieu of the video. Invest is some awesome mics, and enrich the ambience of each scene. Being a professional musician, I can tell you that proper mixing and ADR (Automatic -or Audio- Dialogue Replacement), though time-consuming, will make or break your project.

5. Lastly, for the sake of all that is sacred, invest in actors that have, at the very least, some high school drama classes under their belt!

NOW ... do these things, and I will see you in about two or three years, NOT this year, TWO or THREE years, with Axegrinder 7! And it will far outshine the previous six installments! Thank me later!