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This adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's short story "The Haunter of the Dark" is a visually striking and eerily effective blending of the author's elements, and one of the best HPL films I've seen. Eschewing splashy gore effects, it focuses on building an ominous mood and revealing the slow decay of the main character's mental state as he glimpses "worlds unknown" and grinds his way down into violent madness. Beautiful cinematography and economic storytelling balance the claustrophobic environments of the artist's studio and the expansive mysteries of the abandoned church, while suggesting a darker and more malevolent cosmos lurking just beyond this false-front reality.

Key to the movie is the twitchy, introverted and hypnotic performance of Barret Walz. His self-absorbed and socially awkward character could easily alienate the audience, but instead betrays glimpses of vulnerability, loss, and yearning that underlies his visionary drive and artistic obsessions. He's supported by the terrific and colorful turns of a cast of accomplished character actors, including the avuncular Maurice McNicholas, fragile Edy Cullen, and the seething menace of Tom Lodewyck as fellow mad-artist Goodie Hines.

This movie is also a remarkable achievement on a limited budget. Dir. Robert Cappelletto has wisely focused on good storytelling over splashy effects, while still crafting a top-notch look and feel. The insidiously creepy aural landscape digs even deeper, with great sound design and a moody and effective score. Clearly more influenced by the suggestive horror of Val Lewton than today's splatter-tropes, this is a movie for anyone looking for more substance to their scares. A real treat for fans of Lovecraft's writings, as well as anyone seeking atmospheric, old-style horror thrills.

If you are a serious fan of intelligent scary movies, you frequently find yourself wading through Luke-warm to unbelievably bad dreck, looking for the real gems in the genre.

*This* is the kind of movie you're hoping for.

_Deadwood Park_ is a great example of personal passion, creativity, cinematic technique and a strong story, completely overcoming the lack of a big budget. It's thrilling to watch a classic style pulled off with this much heart and soul. Entertaining and engrossing.

On a micro-budget, the filmmakers have built a slow-burn, atmospheric ghost story with some truly harrowing suspense and chills. Making use of great use of locations, this movie is beautifully shot and deliberately paced. It takes its time, but delivers some remarkable and evocative sequences - from a gas-lamp search of an abandoned second floor, to a harrowing WWII battle flashback (filmed with local re-en-actors). A moody ambient score and effective sound-design give these scenes exactly the bite they need, and near-brilliant use of composition.

All of this would be for nothing without a story worth telling, and this is a place too many indies fall down on. But not here. I can't tell you how delightful it is to be halfway through a movie and _not_ have a clue where it is going. And it turned out that even my suspicions didn't guess the half of it. There is a big story being told here. A smart, literate, novel-like structure full of striking details and themes. Historical flashbacks and visual devices that I found very rewarding. While some of the dialogue is un-remarkable, it's not annoying and seems to support the common-place feeling of the place and the characters.

The only thing I felt detracted were a few performances. The wordless suspense scenes are completely effective, but I found a couple of the actors to be unconvincing in scenes involving dialogue. I know they were going for very low-key, naturalistic performances, but IMHO the movie would have benefited from stronger screen presence.

Still, this is terrific work, an inspiring movie for Indie-filmmakers, and *essential* viewing if you're a fan of old-style ghost stories in a Bava-esquire vein. I strongly recommend _Deadwood Park_.

I thought this film had a lot of good things going on. While hampered by it's budget, and no-doubt brief shooting time, it has a really solid cast especially it's lead. Megan Lee Ethridge is really strong, and carries the dramatic weight of the movie amazingly well. I really liked a lot of the trippy visuals - those times when the director had a little elbow-room to get experimental. There were some great images & editing - good and truly disturbing stuff. The Kafka-esquire bureaucratic nightmare of the facility really came across and was one of the most effective elements, I thought. The underlying ideas of the script were also strong - a nice twist on traditional alien abduction themes. And, of course, the gruesome splatter was a grand hoot! Every good horror movie should cross the line at least once, and I thought the "sperm donor" scene was delightfully over-the-top fun! I really liked how the twist-ending & reveal played out, and I thought it elevated the piece as it wrapped it up.

While it showed some rough edges, and could have been edited tighter for it's pacing, I thought this was a good first effort and shows great promise for it's director.