"Ghosts Of Georgia" follows a young family starting out in a new home with not a lot of money but plenty of land and love in a small town in Georgia. It is a place steeped in history as the family soon learns. As part of the Underground Railroad. Soon paranormal events begin to unfold as the family settles in with most of the activity centering around the gifts of the female members of the family. The story is sold as a sequel to the original film of the same title but is a completely stand along event with no correlation. It is one of the most famous haunting cases in the paranormal investigative world and also one my favorite creepy tales. "Ghosts Of Georgia" was the directorial debut of Tom Elkins who worked on several other movies about ghosts.The film stars Abigail Spencer, Chad Michael Murray, Katee Sackhoff and Emily Alyn Lind all of whom give a pretty standard performance except for Emily who played Heidi. Her performance was far exceeding of the standard capabilities and almost showed the young actress to possess talent like such actresses' as Chloe Moretz or Dakota Fanning.
I wasn't expecting much going into this film mostly due to the ridiculous title of the picture but I actually enjoyed the film. There was the basic elements here to be far more scarier but where held back by standard effects tricks that now plague paranormal movies almost to the point of making them boring. Yet at moments I felt actual suspense and eerie tension as more dramatic scenes unfolded into real chilling events. The setting and story was creepy and the film version held a far more haunting presence than what I originally imagined from the actual story. The film veered from the true paranormal case with a more morbid, dark representation of the evil spirit haunting the land as well as the family. The action sequences were produced well creating a relief from the mediocre dramatic moments that tended to case me to drift off. I found "Ghosts Of Georgia" to be a far better ghost flick it's predecessor and think the film could have gained a better reception from audiences had they not gone with the title. This film had a great set up, acceptable acting, plus all the expected moments of creepy chilling paranormal activity. It isn't going to be a movie that really scares the hell out of anyone over the age of ten but it is a great movie about a haunting. The only downside was the very end after the amped up climax that felt way to hallmark-y, coming off completely cheesy and made for TV. I would tell people to see it and expect a better movie than "The Haunting In Connecticut" or "The Apparition" but don't expect the same amount of fright that you get with "The Amityville Horror" or even "Grave Encounters".
