The Hopewell Haunting

If you like slow paced horror, dripping with atmosphere, tension and layers of story told only through visuals, implications, and audio cues, this is it. This is the movie you need to watch, now.

This film won't appeal to everyone, as the reviews unfortunately reveal, but there is a ticking heart to this film that casual horror viewers won't be able to appreciate.

Subtlety.

The story never gets bombastic. It never becomes too grand or overly ambitious. It stays grounded in a cold harsh 1930s reality. Delivering on that reality with drawn out tension crafted to a nearly perfect degree through great, but subtle, cinematography, excellent sound design and truly moody music.

Unfortunately there are a couple moments where the budget of the film shows through, one of which being a glaring error where an entire crew member can be seen on set for a single brief shot, but overall they do a good job of disguising a lot of the more low budget elements.

Unfortunately, the moments where the budget does show through, mainly in a particular sequence where they show a bit too much of the "creature", knock a couple stars off this films rating.

With slightly better effects--or a little more clever disguising of those less convincing elements--this could be a masterpiece of horror.

The story itself is simple, and leaves you with a lot of lingering questions, but the ambiguity is deeply intriguing, and there are enough subtle story elements sprinkled throughout the film to hint toward a possible answer to the mystery.

This is a film that wants you to think and figure things out on your own. It rarely holds your hand and leaves you both figuratively and literally in the dark, allowing for only murky and speculative answers to the questions it asks.

This is by design, and if that is not the type of movie you enjoy, then don't watch it, but if you like a bit of ambiguity to your horror, if you like to be left with lingering questions just as unsettling as the events that took place, you won't be disappointed here.

This film was enjoyable to watch and is worth finishing despite the sometimes slow pace it presents. There is a certain humility to this film with regards to what is common in horror being made along side it.

If you are used to typical derivative horror film making styles, this could be a divisive viewing for you. It does contain mediocre acting, and low budget sets but it also does not try to be bigger than it's own britches in that regard. Those qualities don't take away from the film. You simply accept that this is what it is and let the story guide you. It is easy to emphasize with the characters.

I wouldn't ever view this again, but I am glad that I saw it.

I watched this on a whim, with zero expectations going in, was pleasantly surprised how much I liked it. The other ratings make for it to seem like a "bad" horror film.

Out the gate you can tell it's a low budget film and you think it's gonna be the same tropes use in every other horror movie out there.

The location, time period, and soundtrack make for a spooky nerve racking experience. The camera work from normal switching to POV is a great touch.

If you're looking for a movie that's gore and jump scares at every turn, you're going to be disappointed. If you enjoy the classics from the likes of Karloff and Chaney with more subtlety and coming to your own conclusions, recommend this movie.

This film was a whole lot of nothing. Nothing happens at all. It's world-record-level boring. There's no character development. There's no emotional experience. It isn't remotely horror. Or a thriller. It's not suspenseful. It's not entertaining. It's not campy. It's got nothing going for it. The whole thing feels like clickbait.

The acting is so painfully awful, you just can't get past it. And the script is even worse. The only redeeming quality was the atmosphere and possibly a little of the cinematography, but since everything else was completely butchered, it doesn't do much. The sound editing could have been fantastic and eerie but instead of being tactful and subtle, it was completely obnoxious, failing to have its intended effect.

I am giving two stars because I somehow got conned into watching to the end thinking MAYBE something redeeming would happen in the final five minutes. It didn't.

Please do yourself a favor and skip this. I seriously implore you to not waste your time. This isn't even worth playing in the background. It isn't worth watching for horror connoisseurs, completionists, or anyone expecting horror or any of its elements in any capacity whatsoever. This is easily in the top 10 worst films I've ever sat through.

First I want to commend the film makers on their stunningly accurate portrayal of how rural Appalachian people behave, especially old people. There was an eerie backwoods realism to The Hopewell Haunting, all the way down to the illiterate but nice young husband with what appeared to be an intellectually disabled wife. As creepy as it totally was, that this disabled woman did not say a word for the entire film and was led around like a small child or an Alzheimer's patient, even that icky detail was on point.

The haunting screams are also genuinely disturbing.

The plot itself is fair to middling. I would have appreciated a clearer backstory as a conclusion to the film. It honestly bugged me that two - possibly three - of the characters were in their 70s yet not one of these old men had any clue about this ancient murder in their own hometown where they'd lived for their entire lives.