American Poltergeist

The college friends Taryn, her brother Michael, his girlfriend Niki, Jenna and Stacey move to comfortable rooms in a house in Fall River, Massachusetts. The owner, Dianna Eastbrock, receives them and soon Taryn feels that something strange is happening in the house. She investigates and learns that two tragedies happened in the house in 04 August 1892 and 1992. Now 04 August is coming and Taryn feels that she is connected to the mysterious house. What is the secret of the house?

"American Poltergeist" is among the worst movies I have ever seen. The production is amateurish and the cast is terrible highlighting Donna Spangler and Nevada Vargas among the worst. In the end, only the art of the DVD cover saves in this movie. My vote is one (awful).

Title (Brazil): "American Poltergeist"

This is the worst film I've ever seen and that's saying something. It scores minus points out of ten. Anyone saying this is anything other than terrible clearly need their head examining. I wouldn't even class this as a movie, give a few kids an iPhone for a weekend and they could come up with something better than this trash. Awful acting and terrible film making. It's a shame because it's not a bad plot and had it been done well then this could've been a half decent project. Normally with terrible films you can laugh at how bad they are, but this was the dullest, most miserable 80-some minutes that I'll never get back. AVOID at all costs.

This one has it all, bad acting, bad plot, bad writing.. You never get to like any character, and it had the feel of one of those porn films someone tried too hard with and tried to make entertaining. Porn film without the porn. It isn't scary at all and used every tired horror cliché. The back story surely could have been better if they hadn't tried to tack it to a real historic and researchable case. A little more imagination could have gone a long way. The acting is so wooden that it could have been done better with hand puppets, though in the case of the creepy house owner, that very much serves the story. I'm wondering if this was intended as a quasi comedy along the lines of "Birdemic- Shock & Awe" in that its so bad its strangely good? But this doesn't have the same kind of appeal. It's just a horrible horrible movie that has already been made a hundred times over. Don't bother with this film I'm sure there is some drying paint that needs watching?

The horror genre is my favorite, but I don't know why after seeing so many bad horror movies. They say you have to watch a lot of bad ones to find a real gem. Well, this is one of the bad ones I watched trying to find myself a gem.

The cinematography was pretty good, considering it's low-budget, and that's about the only thing I'll say was good about this movie. The acting was about what you'd expect from one of these low-budget indie horror films. Unfortunately, so was the story. It was silly enough that it takes place in the house where Lizzie Borden killed her parents. And then they have one of the girls ask who Lizzie Borden was. Another girl says "Give her a break. She's a west coast girl." No, she's not a west coast girl. She's a stupid girl.

They didn't kill anyone until about 57 minutes into the movie. Considering the movie is 79 minutes long - and not very good - that's a long time to wait for people to start getting killed, and a lot of the victims appeared in the movie about 5 minutes before that.

I've seen worse, but that doesn't excuse this mess. I gave this a 3-star rating. I like originality, which this movie was, but just because something is original doesn't mean it's going to be good, as this movie is not.

When Lizzie Borden took an axe I wish she gave this movie 40 whacks.

If you are hoping for a proper ghost movie, as I did given the "American Poltergeist" title, then you will be sorely disappointed. However, if you are looking for a pseudo-slasher movie with a woman in an old dress and lousy green make-up on her face, then this is exactly what you are looking for.

Story-wise, then "American Poltergeist" (aka "The House of Lizzie Borden") was just about as generic and predictable as they come in the haunted horror genre. Only a few paranormal things happened in the house, which seemed okay and to slowly build up to something bigger, but then Lizzie Borden manifested in the shape of a woman in an old dress and with very questionable make-up. And then the movie just fell apart. And it got especially wonderful when a non-clergyman started to perform an exorcism.

For a horror movie the only thing scary was the lack of anything even remotely spooky, scary or disturbing.

Well, I wasn't fully honest there. There is one scary thing, and that was the acting of Donna Spangler. Apparently she thinks that moving, speaking and basically doing everything in such a slow pace, that is best described as a drug-induced stupor, is considered acting. It was so painful to witness. All she did was essentially just amplifying the stupidity of the movie.

"American Poltergeist" was a disappointment of unfathomable proportions. And I should have seen it coming, as the reviewers either all really loved or hated the movie; there seemed to be no middle ground. I, if you haven't guessed it already, is of the latter option.

If you enjoy a proper horror and/or haunting movie, then you shouldn't watch this particular movie.