Ghost Storm

Every now and then SyFy Channel manages to dish out a movie that surprises in a good way and turns the general view on their production upside down. "Ghost Storm", despite the lame name, was actually one such movie. It thoroughly entertained me from start to end, although it was a bit predictable.

The story is about a small island community where something heinous lurks beneath the surface of their idyllic front. The island perish harbors a dark secret. A group of young people are in the graveyard at night when lightning unleashed the dark secret, and spirits emerge from their grave to wreck havoc on the community.

For a SyFy Channel original movie, then the effects in "Ghost Storm" was actually quite good. I especially liked the way that the ghostly mist was moving, it looked nice. However, it would have been nice to see more man-like details on the mist, so you knew that these were indeed ghostly entities, and not just a sentient mist.

The acting in the movie was also quite good, only a single familiar face or two in the cast list. But people, in general, did good jobs with their given roles.

However, "Ghost Storm" is the type of movie that you watch once, and is not likely to watch ever again. It just doesn't have that kind of quality to it. It should be said that compared to many other of SyFy Channel's original movies, then "Ghost Storm" is quite good.

The spirits of the dead wreak revenge on the living in a series of freak storms on a small island.

This film has a faintly absurd premise and doesn't seem to have been made with a huge budget or anything. It also contains a fair amount of low-ish grade CGI. This much it has in common with many TV movies made for the SyFy channel, many of which are nigh-on unwatchable as a consequence.

However this one is mainly played with a straight face and the CGI isn't (for once) meant to resemble something worldly, so much as something other-worldly; this makes it to some extent easier to suspend disbelief. The plot is more rehash than original, but I really didn't mind.

The bottom line is that if you go into this with fairly low expectations (as formed from watching other similar SyFy TV movies) then it is basically going to keep you amused for an hour and a half. I've seen plenty worse.

Ghost Storm (2011)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Former couple Ashley (Crystal Allen) and Hal (Carlos Bernard) must fight a mysterious storm that is killing people on their small island. This isn't your typical storm because this one is built upon the spirits of a group of people who killed themselves years earlier and now they've come back for revenge. GHOST STORM has some good stuff scattered throughout it but in the end its just way too serious to be taken serious and it's certainly never scary. Writer-director Paul Ziller has a couple interesting ideas floating around here including how evil can build itself up in something like a storm but for me it just never really added up to anything memorable. I found way too many moments to be rather silly and especially the scenes where the spirits would have their images show up on people's cell phones. I'm sorry but this was just a bit too much for me. I also didn't know why the film was pretty much blood free during the first half only to then turn on the gore during the second half. I did think the performances were actually pretty good and this is especially true for the two leads. I thought Allen and Bernard had some really good chemistry together and they really came across like a real couple. The supporting players were also good in their roles. I'll also give credit to the special effects, which were much better than you'd normally see in a film like this. Still, GHOST STORM is just way too silly for it to really work and the lack of scares is just a death nail.

First off, I am a fan of Steve Bacic. So discovering he was in this was a pleasant surprise.

The disappointing part was that the effects were a bit cheesy. You'd think with the advancement in special effects and what's available now that they would have thought of something better than blowing the victims up like bricks and leaving dust behind. I'm guessing the guy with the trigger finger had fun though.

As for the characters and story, I have to say I enjoyed it. For this gal not to have turned the channel or turned the TV off...that's a big thing for me. I can't be bothered with crap anymore and the movie held me..so there you go!

Imagine my shock when I googled the movie in IMDb and discovered it had a 3.5. That is so not fair in my opinion. I think in all fairness, it deserves a 6!

As I've often said in my Facebook group Jaded Horror Hound, SyFy Channel films are generally terrible. One or two that I've seen hit the spot (Flight 666 for example), and here we have another one that gets most of it right and totally entertains. It's about a strange electrical storm which is led by angry souls from a mass suicide looking for revenge on the townsfolk of a small island community. Passable CGI FX, relatively good acting and some rather nice camera work, all prove that SyFy can release some semi-decent films when they want to. Cut and paste this may be, but it's non stop action and exploding bodies turning to ash all the way! I'm actually gonna keep this in my collection....