Paranormal Haunting at Silver Falls

Don't be fooled by the cover. If seeing translucent ghosts with black eye shadow opening up their mouths in a silent scream, and hearing the creaking of doors opening by themselves sends shivers racing across your skin, then A Haunting at Silver Falls will be a terrifying experience. If not, and you are after something more frightening, you might be better off watching A Haunted Mansion with Eddie Murphy, which proved to be a lot more atmospheric.

This is not to say the film is terrible by any standard, it just isn't the kind of feature that anyone could ever mistake for a horror film, despite the distributor's attempts to pitch it as one. Instead, it is more of an adolescent romance, shrouded by supernatural occurrences, which appears to have qualities reminiscent of the movie Twilight (minus the vampires).

The film has its beneficial qualities that help grasp the audience's attention. Jordan, a teenager, who has recently moved to a new town to live with her aunt and her husband, the only familial members she has left, finds herself inexplicably slipping a ring onto her finger that she finds in the woods one night after attending a party. By doing so, Jordan inadvertently invites the ghost of a woman about her age into her life, who, was horrifically murdered, along with her twin. In order to satisfy the spirit's thirst for justice, Jordan is inevitably spurred into uncovering the identity of the killer.

Over the course of the film, the depth of character development is well orchestrated, which in turn helps conceive likable characters, and the occasionally funny, witty dialogue establishes a sense of comical relief. This aside, there were instances that were not believable, and other aspects of the film that could have been better developed.

The film opens with a young woman, running frantically through the woods, pretending to trip over as she attempts to hide from an unseen attacker; an introduction any horror film fanatic would have seen better executed at least half a dozen times before. Despite this, the opening does manage to build some measure of tension, although it is not effectively executed throughout the majority of the feature. The ghosts we witness in A Haunting at Silver Falls seem too sympathetic and compassionate to be feared. Moreover, Jordan exhibits little terror when confronted by a specter, and because of this, how are we supposed to fear the female equivalent of Casper? However, this criticism aside, these strategies allow the viewers to appreciate the ghosts as people, with human motivations.

Furthermore, the relationship between Jordan and her paramour, Larry, was not a believable sub-plot. On one hand we have Jordan - an utterly gorgeous young woman who could cause the heart of an iceberg to melt, while on the other we have Larry, a Napoleon Dynamite look-a-like, with issues regarding his confidence. No matter how much geeks such as myself would wish for that to be real, women with the above mentioned qualities, rarely, if ever, affiliate romantically with nerds.

On top of this, although the lead antagonist of the plot was not formidable or threatening enough to be taken seriously, this was overshadowed by the predictability. Despite the feature providing the audience with several characters who exhibited suspicious qualities, before the end, it was too obvious who the villain truly was.

A Haunting at Silver Falls is not necessarily a movie you ought to avoid, but it isn't a film that will thoroughly entertain you either, and by the end, your thirst for a horror film will certainly not be quenched. With a plot deserving of more twists and turns, and an atmosphere in need of a far darker ambiance, this is probably a film you will want to rent, rather than purchase.

It isn't a horror that'll scare you witless, there aren't any jump scares or scenes of bloody violence. It's quite a simple ghost seeking vengeance plot. Slightly creepy, but nothing you'll lose sleep over. If anything you understand the ghost(s) isn't going to hurt the protagonist and just wants her to know something, and it's all about finding out what that something is, so there's little threat involved.

I enjoyed it though! I found myself wanting to see the end and it wasn't a bad story overall.

Worth a shot if you're into stories and can live without brilliant cinematography and things that'll come crawling out of your closet when you try to get to sleep afterwards.

It did make me wonder what would have happened if she'd gone to Silver Falls with Robbie at the end to see what he had to show her. Maybe it was just a lame come on like she thought, though...

For a "B" movie, they had a decent budget, and you can tell it. (Some reviewers calling this a low budget "B" Movie. I wouldn't call 2.5 million , low budget. Of course it isn't the Hollywood ga-zillion dollar budget, but Iv'e seen LOW BUDGET Movies (10,000 to 300,000)A BIG difference.

This movie is more of a "thriller" type haunting, then a haunted "HORROR" movie. The story unique and paced well. There are some small plot holes but nothing major enough that I couldn't continue to watch the movie and enjoy it for what it offered.It also had some occasional surprising and interesting twists and was directed well thru out most of the film.

Most of the acting is passable/acceptable, with some scenes/characters less then mediocre. Cinematography/camera and sound was well done and score/screenplay also nicely done.

The make-up and CGI effects were well done. Appropriately creepy and realistic without being over done.

If you are a thriller/haunted ghosts fan, and wont miss the intense scares/violence/blood, and perhaps enjoy a good lifetime movie on occasion, then this movie is right up your alley.

"A Haunting at Silver Falls" failed to deliver on so many levels. And for a ghost movie it was anything but scary and below mediocrity.

There were absolutely no scare moments in the movie, and there wasn't anything scary or even remotely horror to this. And suffering from a poor storyline and a failure to scare, concentrating on the movie started to become a struggle, and it was hard not to pick up my phone and start doing something else.

The story is about Jordan (played by Alix Elizabeth Gitter) who comes to a small town, where she finds a ring somewhere in the forest, and of course she puts it on. The ring is linked to the dark past of an event that took place in the town, and Jordan starts to see the apparition of a dead girl, while coming closer and closer to the truth.

I will say that the story did have some parts that could have been great, but ultimately failed to do so. I think it was because the movie was predictable and because of the complete lack of scares, that the movie failed to entertain me.

As for the actors and actresses in the movie, well I will say that they actually did good jobs with the roles they were given. But they were fighting an uphill battle against a predictable storyline and a very mediocre chain of events throughout the entire movie.

If you are looking for a good ghost movie to make the small hairs on the back of your neck stand up, you had better look elsewhere, because this movie will fail to do the trick.

And to top it off, the movie starts out with "inspired by true events". Right, well at least the dead twin apparitions was not the source of inspiration. On the plus side, then the movie at least wasn't one of those God awful "found footage" type of movies.

Moving to a quiet suburb after her parents' death, a teenage girl finds herself embroiled in a mystery by a pair of twin ghosts to solve their murder they may or may not be connected with her distant relatives she just moved in with.

This is a rather enjoyable enough Lifetime Channel ghost story even if it's pretty familiar and generic most of the time. As far as these general types of 'Righting Wrong' style of ghost movies go, where they appear to someone in a plea to fix a mistake seen by many in the community who are grossly misled by the real perpetrators or part of it themselves, the horror comes from the fact that there's plenty of ghostly encounters out of nowhere or strange shocks that come up, but then drop off in order to invest in the mystery surrounding everything and finally at the end bring everything to a conclusion. That's how this one plays out, and it certainly hits those familiar notes quite well and often in the beginning which usually pulls out the clichéd notion of the victim thinking they've gone crazy constantly seeing ghosts everywhere which does make for this one being so run-of-the-mill and ordinary during this main section of the film. That the mystery this one becomes embroiled in has a pretty gruesome story at the center of it all does help the middle going while the teens investigate this and holds off the ghostly encounters until the end when the real culprit comes forward and centers the film around that new-found angle and brings back the ghostly happenings in a fun if admittedly dry finale. There's not a whole lot of real true horror in this one in terms of bloodletting, gore, dead bodies or such as the ghosts' preference is to help initiate the investigation into why they're there and killing off the one who'll do that won't help matters, so as long as that factor isn't an issue, this is a fine effort.

Rated Unrated/PG-13: Violence, Language, drug use and children-in-jeopardy.