A Haunting at Silver Falls

A small town is haunted by the twin daughters of a wrongfully convicted man. Young Jordan (Alix Elizabeth Gitter) is sent down the path to who the real killer is only to find the killer is very close to her.

I figured this was going to be yet another disposable film with no names and little inspiration. I was wrong on both counts. One, it actually has a cast member (Erick Avari) whose face you have seen other places. And two, it is far better than the average "haunting" film because the story is not really about the ghosts at all.

I have to single out James Cavlo as Larry, and I hope to see Cavlo in more things. In this film he seemed to be referencing "American Werewolf in London" by his style, and I am unsure if this was intentional. His look and delivery were excellent, so I hope we see him in bigger things in the future.

The lead actress, Alix Gitter, is also excellent. She seems to have done even less than Cavlo, though her growing list of films might catch someone's eye. She is talented and has a look that I think would take her far in Hollywood. I hope so.

Almost a good horror movie.... Had elements of Sixth Sense, The Ring, The Gift, and Stir of Echoes (in fact, that's probably how the film was pitched to get it made). Problem was I saw all of those and they were all way better. It was decent though, and with the above being said, we kept watching. I did like the interaction of the ghosts with the main character. I also thought the acting was pretty good all around. Then came the last half hour. I came to a point where I wanted to turn it off, but I had already invested my time and wanted to see how it ended. With out giving anything away...I should've gone to bed. It's like the screenplay guy couldn't figure out how to end the movie and someone else came up with an idea to just get it over with. There seemed to be some great avenues to explore and they either didn't know how or wanted to try to be "clever". It did inspire me to post my first review on IMDb though...

It isn't a horror that'll scare you witless, there aren't any jump scares or scenes of bloody violence. It's quite a simple ghost seeking vengeance plot. Slightly creepy, but nothing you'll lose sleep over. If anything you understand the ghost(s) isn't going to hurt the protagonist and just wants her to know something, and it's all about finding out what that something is, so there's little threat involved.

I enjoyed it though! I found myself wanting to see the end and it wasn't a bad story overall.

Worth a shot if you're into stories and can live without brilliant cinematography and things that'll come crawling out of your closet when you try to get to sleep afterwards.

It did make me wonder what would have happened if she'd gone to Silver Falls with Robbie at the end to see what he had to show her. Maybe it was just a lame come on like she thought, though...

Don't be fooled by the cover. If seeing translucent ghosts with black eye shadow opening up their mouths in a silent scream, and hearing the creaking of doors opening by themselves sends shivers racing across your skin, then A Haunting at Silver Falls will be a terrifying experience. If not, and you are after something more frightening, you might be better off watching A Haunted Mansion with Eddie Murphy, which proved to be a lot more atmospheric.

This is not to say the film is terrible by any standard, it just isn't the kind of feature that anyone could ever mistake for a horror film, despite the distributor's attempts to pitch it as one. Instead, it is more of an adolescent romance, shrouded by supernatural occurrences, which appears to have qualities reminiscent of the movie Twilight (minus the vampires).

The film has its beneficial qualities that help grasp the audience's attention. Jordan, a teenager, who has recently moved to a new town to live with her aunt and her husband, the only familial members she has left, finds herself inexplicably slipping a ring onto her finger that she finds in the woods one night after attending a party. By doing so, Jordan inadvertently invites the ghost of a woman about her age into her life, who, was horrifically murdered, along with her twin. In order to satisfy the spirit's thirst for justice, Jordan is inevitably spurred into uncovering the identity of the killer.

Over the course of the film, the depth of character development is well orchestrated, which in turn helps conceive likable characters, and the occasionally funny, witty dialogue establishes a sense of comical relief. This aside, there were instances that were not believable, and other aspects of the film that could have been better developed.

The film opens with a young woman, running frantically through the woods, pretending to trip over as she attempts to hide from an unseen attacker; an introduction any horror film fanatic would have seen better executed at least half a dozen times before. Despite this, the opening does manage to build some measure of tension, although it is not effectively executed throughout the majority of the feature. The ghosts we witness in A Haunting at Silver Falls seem too sympathetic and compassionate to be feared. Moreover, Jordan exhibits little terror when confronted by a specter, and because of this, how are we supposed to fear the female equivalent of Casper? However, this criticism aside, these strategies allow the viewers to appreciate the ghosts as people, with human motivations.

Furthermore, the relationship between Jordan and her paramour, Larry, was not a believable sub-plot. On one hand we have Jordan - an utterly gorgeous young woman who could cause the heart of an iceberg to melt, while on the other we have Larry, a Napoleon Dynamite look-a-like, with issues regarding his confidence. No matter how much geeks such as myself would wish for that to be real, women with the above mentioned qualities, rarely, if ever, affiliate romantically with nerds.

On top of this, although the lead antagonist of the plot was not formidable or threatening enough to be taken seriously, this was overshadowed by the predictability. Despite the feature providing the audience with several characters who exhibited suspicious qualities, before the end, it was too obvious who the villain truly was.

A Haunting at Silver Falls is not necessarily a movie you ought to avoid, but it isn't a film that will thoroughly entertain you either, and by the end, your thirst for a horror film will certainly not be quenched. With a plot deserving of more twists and turns, and an atmosphere in need of a far darker ambiance, this is probably a film you will want to rent, rather than purchase.

Moving to a quiet suburb after her parents' death, a teenage girl finds herself embroiled in a mystery by a pair of twin ghosts to solve their murder they may or may not be connected with her distant relatives she just moved in with.

This is a rather enjoyable enough Lifetime Channel ghost story even if it's pretty familiar and generic most of the time. As far as these general types of 'Righting Wrong' style of ghost movies go, where they appear to someone in a plea to fix a mistake seen by many in the community who are grossly misled by the real perpetrators or part of it themselves, the horror comes from the fact that there's plenty of ghostly encounters out of nowhere or strange shocks that come up, but then drop off in order to invest in the mystery surrounding everything and finally at the end bring everything to a conclusion. That's how this one plays out, and it certainly hits those familiar notes quite well and often in the beginning which usually pulls out the clichéd notion of the victim thinking they've gone crazy constantly seeing ghosts everywhere which does make for this one being so run-of-the-mill and ordinary during this main section of the film. That the mystery this one becomes embroiled in has a pretty gruesome story at the center of it all does help the middle going while the teens investigate this and holds off the ghostly encounters until the end when the real culprit comes forward and centers the film around that new-found angle and brings back the ghostly happenings in a fun if admittedly dry finale. There's not a whole lot of real true horror in this one in terms of bloodletting, gore, dead bodies or such as the ghosts' preference is to help initiate the investigation into why they're there and killing off the one who'll do that won't help matters, so as long as that factor isn't an issue, this is a fine effort.

Rated Unrated/PG-13: Violence, Language, drug use and children-in-jeopardy.