Highly Overrated But Still Good

Absolutely Brilliant!

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

First off let me start by saying, if you're hoping to watch a scary movie than this is NOT the movie you want to watch. The plot wasn't all that terrible, but there was just to much talking. I'll admit that some parts of the movie i would zone out and than realize i'm watching it because it was so boring.The beginning was okay, It started as five friends wanting to make documentary about a haunted hotel, they go on a road trip & the car breaks down they go to a cemetery blah blah blah, then finally they get to a bar with a man who is important to the story, he gives them a key and they're off to the hotel. The ghost wasn't scary, it wasn't any nightmare on elm street effects, it didn't look real & by the end if you were looking for a scary movie you'd be disappointed like i was.

I decided to rent this movie mainly because Roddy Piper was in it. In the past, he has appeared in some very enjoyable movies, and I thought this effort might be another one. Sadly, Roddy is not one of the main characters, and not only is he unrecognizable, he doesn't get to do that much here.The rest of the movie is even worse. It appears that the movie only spent money on the digital camera and a few other technical pieces of equipment, because hardly anything resembling "production values" appears on screen. It just seems that the movie had access to a bar and an abandoned building, and wrote a screenplay that could use those locations without bringing in anything else. As a result, the movie looks extremely cheap, not helped by poor lighting and goofs like the shadow of the boom mike appearing on a wall in the background.But what's worse is the extremely slow pace. It takes forever for the characters to realize they are in jeopardy, and once they realize this, they don't do the logical thing like get out of there. In short, there is absolutely nothing here to justify giving the movie a look.

So, this was one of those movies that I just couldn't get into. Usually I can have a horror movie in the background while doing other things, and still follow along. This one couldn't keep my attention & I had to keep rewinding parts (sometimes more than once) to catch up to the plot.Basic premise: 5 university students descend upon an alleged haunted hotel to get footage of phenomena for a thesis project. A woman, Elizabeth, and her baby were murdered at the hands of the hotel owner, George, after he finds out she was not faithful, and the baby was not his. Of course the students have car problems; of course they have to go through a graveyard; of course they encounter punchy locals (with a where-in-the-hell-do-I know-this-guy cameo by "Rowdy" Roddy Piper); of course the writing is plagued with trite stereotypes - the obnoxious alcoholic sex-on-the-brain a-hole & the slutty kleptomaniac girlfriend; of course I found this on fearnet.So we have our start and back story (sort of). But, here's where things go from standard to confusingly off-track. We have a shot of the old, deaf townie presumably in the hotel after the group begins to settle in the hotel. This is never explained or followed up on. Seriously, were there scenes cut? Was it meant as misdirection that this was all a setup?The ghost - can she not decide whether she just wants her murdered baby? revenge against the lineage who wronged her? to kill everyone? to get laid? Because although most of her lines have to do with the first choice, she dabbles in all of the above.Of course the gang splits up, and amid possession and solid ghost 'hauntings' the kids are picked off one by one. Our heroine, Julie, feels responsible because it was her grandmother who snitched & started all the trouble. Julie gets most of the story through a weird mind- meld flashback. Her heirloom, a locket, actually belongs to the ghost. Will giving it back free her spirit & appease her?Nope - a trinket doesn't give her baby back, excuse her being tortured and murdered, or get rid of her bloodlust.The film gives a clear delineation of the 'good' characters versus the 'bad' ones. You pretty much figure out early who will be killed first. The good ones get it, too, because this is one angry spirit.The ending is kind of craptastic. Julie sees the fate of Elizabeth and succumbs somehow to the same torture. She is left alone in the hotel, staring out of the window, while the tetchy bartender (a lookalike descendant of Elizabeth's lover) looks on, satisfied.The movie is plagued with a nonsensical plot, bad writing, and some not-so-stellar acting. Honestly, I thought George was a Soprano's reject. The pouty princess 'friend' was kind of annoying, and even our ghost was a bit over-the-top with her expressions.But the kicker? Over the credits is this random history-lesson back story about the town that really added NOTHING to the plot or characters. The narrator isn't even credited. It was a bizarre choice that really made no sense. Maybe if it was tied in at the beginning as exposition, it may have transitioned properly. Or even if it was in Julie's voice, it may have tied in. But, this was a random, unheard-from omniscient voice-over that made it feel even more like a film school project that had to fit in required elements.Overall, not a great flick - I have seen worse, but this one definitely could've been made much better.Side notes - after reading a few of the other reviews:I had totally missed that this hotel was set in Nevada - or that I-95 reference would have clicked as well. Just goes to show how not interested I was in this film.Re: Twilight Zone feel. Actually, the summary (and voice) reminded me much more of the Outer Limits. But, I also didn't get that vibe until the ending credits.It's a semi-watchable movie, with a lot of plot holes and characterization issues to contend with. Fairly forewarned.

Julie and her crew go down to the ghost town of Goldfield hoping to get some juicy stuff about the nearby hotel that's supposedly haunted by Elizabeth Walker, a young woman who had been killed after her wealthy guy found out that the baby she was carrying was not his own. The crew want to get video of her as she prowls the hotel's corridors looking for said baby, who was also murdered.The big selling point for me in renting this film was the sheer fact the Roddy Piper was in it. Visons of past greatness such as "They Live", "Hell Comes to Frogtown" (and to a lesser degree "No Contest") danced in my head. I was kind of hoping to see a nice ghost story as well. Sadly this mess of a film accomplished neither as I soon sadly realized that Piper's character was dreadfully under-developed and left him nothing to work with. And the ghost story was predictable, trite, and above all dreadfully boring. Leave this one in the bargain bin where it belongs.My Grade: D- DVD Extras: a stills gallery; a trailer for this film; and trailers for "Dark Reel", "Baseline Killer", & "Carnivorous"