GhostWatcher

I always enjoy a break from the Holloywood style of movie making. Okay, so at times the dialog was painful, the acting was wooden, and I could visualize the stage directions in front of me. I enjoyed watching this movie and I thought the three lead actresses were endearing. It was so cool to see a movie where all of the leads were women who were brave and took action, and not just there to serve as love interests.

I want to give special recognition to the film makers for casting normal women in this film. All three of them were very attractive, but in their own unique ways, not the Hollywood cookie-cutter painfully-thin way. It was a lot of fun to watch them. They looked like me and my friends, and were easy to relate to and invest in.

Great little flick! Thanks for the entertainment.

Every now and then a film comes along that makes you wonder why you purchase any DVD from the $1.99 bin. This is certainly one of those films. Director David A. Cross really needs to keep his day job, and stop insulting our intelligence. The film really has no plot outline at all, and the characters are about as believable as "Mickey Mouse" (sorry Mickey). Watching the film, the viewer starts to wonder if these "actors" have ever acted in anything before. My daughter's second grade class productions show more talent then this entire cast combined. The special makeup effects are the equivalent of what one might find at K-Mart during an after-Halloween sale. If I wasn't so embarrassed that I bought it in the first place, I'd return it in disguise... This film deserves NO rating.

Crummy music,horrible acting and bad directing align themselves in a way that I could never have imagined to be possible. Scenes where a simple shot of two persons speaking to each other were clumsily "over- directed" by quick cutting back and forth between the two to the point where I was getting dizzy. What's even more pathetic is that even the makeup sucked in this movie. The ghost makeup made the actor appear as a demented version of a dude from Blue Man Group. The Elizabeth Dean character had so much blush applied in some scenes that you could swear the she had just been involved in a bitch- slapping session.Anyone who thinks this is even SOMEWHAT remotely watchable needs their head examined. This effort is so lame and unprofessional I was actually chuckling from the very beginning. I enjoy low budget pics but this stoops to an all-time low in cinema. Pure excrement. Only to be viewed with a trusty can of Lysol, yes, it stinks that bad.

After a Halloween on a Friday, Laura Kove (Jillian Byrnes) becomes agoraphobic. One year later she finds that her apartment is haunted. She searches in Internet and finds Elizabeth Dean (Jennifer Servary), a con ghost hunter, actually a stripper with a peepshow on line, offering her services and Laura and her best friend Nikki Brandt (Marianne Hayden) hire her to get rid off the fiend. Elizabeth investigates the past of Laura and discloses the truth of the mystery.

"Ghost Watcher" is so amateurish and flawed that becomes funny. It is the typical movie that you join your friends to make fun and laugh so ridiculous it is. I do not know how producers invested in this film with such terrible screenplay and cast. The story is horrible, the three lead characters are awful and their actions make no sense. Elizabeth, for example, is a slut that risks her life to help Laura, inclusive dying in the end, solves the murders of a serial killer in a couple of hours, in a absolute lack of coherence. Nikki killed and buried Malculm Dixon, but she accepts to go to the abandoned house in the night to show the corpse to Elizabeth after seeing the weird events in Laura's kitchen. And Laura is pure contradiction, hiring a stripper to hunt ghosts. If any actress of this flick reads my review, do not be upset with me, but the acting are simply awful in this movie. I do not intend to see "Ghost Watcher 2", therefore I hope to have the chance to see any of you in the future with better performances in another movie. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "Após a Morte" ("After the Death")

Ghostwatcher uses some of the most classic, horror techniques to weave an edge of your seat thriller that will scare the pants off of you, combined with an edgy and contemporary soundtrack that features great music. I got a chance to speak with Dave Cross(director) at one of the screenings and was very impressed with, not only his enthusiasm for his film, but for the genre of horror as a whole. The entire cast does an excellent job maintaining the suspense as the story unfolds. The movie has already picked up several film festival awards and Marrianne Hayden(Nikki Brandt) won Best Actress at the 2002 Screamfest Horror Film Festival in Los Angeles, CA. I just got word that the film is supposed to be released by Artisan Pictures on DVD October 1st. Do yourself a favor and buy this movie. It should be in every horror fan's collection!!