Les fantômes de High River

Another ghost movie I saw some years ago. It is not worth your time. It is boring. The biggest sin a movie can commit - being uninteresting and boring.

Migel Ferrer I have always liked, but it is very clear he only took this role for the paycheck. A paycheck I can't imagine having been very big.

Very little happens in this movie, and there is nothing that stands out, there is not much I remember at all. Anyone saying this is good is from the crew.

Stay clear of this one, it is not scary at all.

Viewers may recall the Sci-Fi Channel series, SIGHTINGS which covered all manner of paranormal happenings around the world. Well, one case they investigated defied all explanations and brought comparisons to the most infamous US "Poltergeist" case, The Bell Witch of Tennessee. Like the Bell Witch, The Heartland Ghost case, as it was dubbed, consisted of all manner of phenomena but by far the most distressing were the multiple physical attacks directed toward the Dad in the house. He was scratched repeatedly and the cameras even managed to capture these attacks on film. Well, it was probably inevitable that there would be a movie about this someday and this attempt to cover the events is about as good as you can expect.

The film covers the basic story of the young couple with a child who buy the Victorian house as a fixer-upper and encounter cold spots, flying objects, slamming doors, electrical weirdness and so on. The film contrasts the basic skepticism of the dad and the SIGHTINGS Producers with the convictions of a Ghost Hunter played by Miguel Ferrer. As a dramatic device, we are treated to flashbacks of the various possible ghosts lives and dream sequences. These interludes are not so fantastic as to be annoying and they move the story along. In the real case, the names of the alleged ghosts and their background were uncovered through research.

Overall, this is an above average TV Movie about a disturbing apparent Haunting or Poltergeist. Unlike the silliness of TV Movies based on the exploits of the self-styled Demon-Hunters, Ed and Lorraine Warren, this movie simply lets the story unfold with a minimum of preaching. There isn't any sanctimonoius bible-waving or Holy water sprinkling and the SIGHTINGS crew and their Psychics are not portrayed as the afflicted family's saviors. In the Warrens' films, they are always shown to be the equivilant of Father Merrin in demon-infested homes of surburbia!

THE HEARTLAND GHOST is a straightforward retelling of the events in a sleepy Kansas community that which drew in a fairly serious investigation by a Television show dedicated to just such happenings. The Case was rarity for SIGHTINGS since they were there as the events unfolded as opposed to merely retelling the story afterwards which was what they usually did on their show. The SIGHTINGS teams camped out at the house with all manner of equipment and came away with more questions than answers. As a film, the story works but it doesn't come down on one side or the other. It does show the terrible toll the events took on the life of the young family whose whole world was turned upside down.

For viewers who saw the original SIGHTINGS Episodes on The Heartland Ghost, this film is a nice overview. For those that didn't, it's a decent introduction to the case.

Good premise has a paranormal TV-series investigating a poltergeist/haunting in Kansas. This is based on a true story (as featured in the series "Sightings") but comes off a dull and limp. Perhaps some actual footage from the series itself would've spiced things up a bit. It appears earnest at times but never believable. Worse of all is the POV shots from the "spirits" in the house, which feature distorted fish-eyed lens and creepy sounds. Not really scary at all, which is a real shame but at least it manages to hold your interest a little bit. The set up is really a good one but lack of actual footage is a nagging hindrance.

I wasn't expecting much from this one, and that's exactly what I got. "True story," indeed. And Bambi is a nature documentary.

Where to begin? Without any knowledge of its origins, I had it identified as a TV movie in minutes. The lighting was flat. The actors walked through scene after scene like cardboard cutouts. The monster "effects" - almost makes them sound legit, doesn't it? - amounted to a wide-angle lens and some color saturation. Dreadful. This is the same low-budget effect that became popular with the zero-budget crowd: that monster point of view with Sega colors.

The thing that plucked this turkey, though, was the screenplay. The attempts at emotional depth were laughable. Every time one of the characters opened their mouths, I knew they were going to utter some completely clichéd and idiotic thing. I was never disappointed.

Sorry about the venom, folks, but I don't want anybody wasting rental money on this one. Beau Bridges, why have you forsaken me?

In a provincial small town in Kansas, the low middle class young couple Jeff (Gabriel Olds) and Pam (Thea Gill) invests all their savings in an old mansion. Their intention is to restore the house and sell it, making good money. However, ghosts haunt them, and Pam decides to call the skeptical reporter Derek (Beau Bridges) and his crew, specialized in paranormal phenomena and formed by Lou (Nia Long), Allen (Miguel Ferrer) and the cameraman. There they realize that the situation is real and the unrevealed truth about a former family who lived in that house. This movie is another reasonable (television) movie about haunted house. There is nothing special or different in this story from other similar movies about this repeated theme, but may entertain. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): ` Amaldiçoados Pelo Passado' (`Cursed by the Past')