This is an odd little film, further oddened by the fact that apparently it wasn't properly transferred to Amazon Prime in terms of aspect ratio, because it's supposed to be in widescreen, but for some reason comes out in full screen, with the black bars on top and bottom, so it's only taking up like 2/3rds of the screen.
At first I thought it was supposed to be in full screen, as it begins with an inexplicable murder sequence set in 1982 yet supposedly filmed on some kind of 1950s or 60s style reel camera. As the camera repeatedly cuts to multiple shots, including some impossible ones like several feet behind a solid wall, it's increasingly unclear what the point of this footage is or what it's supposed to be in-universe. No mention of this footage is made ever again and it's completely unnecessary. They could have used it the way they do later on, splicing fragments and clips in like "visions".
Once it gets to the real film itself, it turns to a more conventional camera, though with a rather odd framerate that, mixed with its introductory style, makes it look and feel like a Forensic Files-style re-enactment documentary. They go with this style for about 20 minutes before dropping it and going for a purely conventional style movie... but continuing in the odd framerate/shooting style of a true crime re-enactment, complete with a solitary piece of repetitive music that is used and re-used in every spooky scene that sounds like it was pecked out on a casio keyboard.
the film itself covers a paranormal investigator named Carter who is investigating a house owned by an inexplicably successful 28-year old who inherited it from his father, who in turn inherited it from his brother who was murdered with his children by his wife, who then apparently drowns a baby. This is the murder we see at the beginning of the film.
Inexplicably, the guy wants her to work with two other people; a cameraguy friend of his, and a writer. Once they all meet and come to the house, they're met up with a woman, Mary Young Mortenson, for whom I give credit to the actor for not portraying in the stereotypical uptight Christian conservative zealot but making her somewhat believable, willing to curse and talk about guys and actually be reasonable when confronted with non religious people instead of constantly jabbering about god.
The flip side of this potentially "realistic" portrayal is that it may just be so terribly written and acted that it is only accidentally believable. The acting is indeed terrible, yet ironically it is about the exact same caliber of stilted, awkwardly wooden acting that you get from true crime documentary re-enactments. If that were the intention, it would better explain the bad acting, while throwing in the potential mystery of what the hell happened in the editing room to edit out the "documentary style".
The plot is a boring foray into this group scouting out a supposedly haunting house and experiencing spooky ghosty events using some of the worst little visual effects and clumsily spliced in backmasked audio.
Virtually nothing happens other than some scattered, unconvincing "ghost" appearances while the people involved all bicker and fight constantly, mostly with Mary Young. These encounters are hilarious for all the wrong reasons, and culminate in the obvious revelation that Mary Young was not originally invited by the owner of the house as she'd said, but just a crackpot member of the murder victim's church who occasionally shows cult-like devotion to him and his memory.
While the group finds mounting evidence that the original man of the house was a bad and devious man, Mary Young refuses to hear of it and has a freakout that leads to her leaving. She then calls in to a religious radio show complaining about them, and then comes back to wear a weird religious box-helmet thing, then kill them all, or something. It's not entirely clear what was happening.
After that, we get an extremely long sequence, filmed even more in true crime documentary re-enactment style, with Mary Young's voice-over narration. Turns out the original man of the house was a very bad man, as he takes in a moronic couple's teenage daughter who they say has been a "whore", and chains her up in the attic and rapes her repeatedly over several weeks. The wife is fully aware of all this, and the husband also has sex with her, while making her wear the religious box-helmet contraption. The girl gets pregnant and gives birth, and the wife finally loses it and the murder we saw at the beginning is revealed in full, and it's then revealed the baby didn't drown in the bathtub and was rescued by a police cop named Mortenson, and it's revealed that baby was Mary Young Mortenson, who then comes out of the narration and kills herself in the same way as the wife did.
Rather than ending now, the film goes on painfully to apparently show Carter as a ghost in the house now, and by this point the story has long since ended and what unfolds here is a sad epilogue to a poorly-made film lamenting the fate of a character no one cares about.
At first I thought it was supposed to be in full screen, as it begins with an inexplicable murder sequence set in 1982 yet supposedly filmed on some kind of 1950s or 60s style reel camera. As the camera repeatedly cuts to multiple shots, including some impossible ones like several feet behind a solid wall, it's increasingly unclear what the point of this footage is or what it's supposed to be in-universe. No mention of this footage is made ever again and it's completely unnecessary. They could have used it the way they do later on, splicing fragments and clips in like "visions".
Once it gets to the real film itself, it turns to a more conventional camera, though with a rather odd framerate that, mixed with its introductory style, makes it look and feel like a Forensic Files-style re-enactment documentary. They go with this style for about 20 minutes before dropping it and going for a purely conventional style movie... but continuing in the odd framerate/shooting style of a true crime re-enactment, complete with a solitary piece of repetitive music that is used and re-used in every spooky scene that sounds like it was pecked out on a casio keyboard.
the film itself covers a paranormal investigator named Carter who is investigating a house owned by an inexplicably successful 28-year old who inherited it from his father, who in turn inherited it from his brother who was murdered with his children by his wife, who then apparently drowns a baby. This is the murder we see at the beginning of the film.
Inexplicably, the guy wants her to work with two other people; a cameraguy friend of his, and a writer. Once they all meet and come to the house, they're met up with a woman, Mary Young Mortenson, for whom I give credit to the actor for not portraying in the stereotypical uptight Christian conservative zealot but making her somewhat believable, willing to curse and talk about guys and actually be reasonable when confronted with non religious people instead of constantly jabbering about god.
The flip side of this potentially "realistic" portrayal is that it may just be so terribly written and acted that it is only accidentally believable. The acting is indeed terrible, yet ironically it is about the exact same caliber of stilted, awkwardly wooden acting that you get from true crime documentary re-enactments. If that were the intention, it would better explain the bad acting, while throwing in the potential mystery of what the hell happened in the editing room to edit out the "documentary style".
The plot is a boring foray into this group scouting out a supposedly haunting house and experiencing spooky ghosty events using some of the worst little visual effects and clumsily spliced in backmasked audio.
Virtually nothing happens other than some scattered, unconvincing "ghost" appearances while the people involved all bicker and fight constantly, mostly with Mary Young. These encounters are hilarious for all the wrong reasons, and culminate in the obvious revelation that Mary Young was not originally invited by the owner of the house as she'd said, but just a crackpot member of the murder victim's church who occasionally shows cult-like devotion to him and his memory.
While the group finds mounting evidence that the original man of the house was a bad and devious man, Mary Young refuses to hear of it and has a freakout that leads to her leaving. She then calls in to a religious radio show complaining about them, and then comes back to wear a weird religious box-helmet thing, then kill them all, or something. It's not entirely clear what was happening.
After that, we get an extremely long sequence, filmed even more in true crime documentary re-enactment style, with Mary Young's voice-over narration. Turns out the original man of the house was a very bad man, as he takes in a moronic couple's teenage daughter who they say has been a "whore", and chains her up in the attic and rapes her repeatedly over several weeks. The wife is fully aware of all this, and the husband also has sex with her, while making her wear the religious box-helmet contraption. The girl gets pregnant and gives birth, and the wife finally loses it and the murder we saw at the beginning is revealed in full, and it's then revealed the baby didn't drown in the bathtub and was rescued by a police cop named Mortenson, and it's revealed that baby was Mary Young Mortenson, who then comes out of the narration and kills herself in the same way as the wife did.
Rather than ending now, the film goes on painfully to apparently show Carter as a ghost in the house now, and by this point the story has long since ended and what unfolds here is a sad epilogue to a poorly-made film lamenting the fate of a character no one cares about.