Inner Ghosts

The story is a very complex, creative exploration of paranormal activity and psuedo-scientific applications. I say psuedo, but the logic behind this concept could very well be tested in mainstream science. Not all of the material but the basic stuff. "Inner Ghosts" is a good, layered story that mixes practical ghost story themes with more fantastical elements.

The acting is pretty good, the characters are fully developed and relatable. At times it gets a bit too theatrical and overly dramatic, but a story where contact with ghosts in order to test and explore intelligence in an attempt to find real world application isn't meant to play straight. The writing may stretch ones sense of belief but it is well done.

"Inner Ghosts" is atmospheric and filled with all the expected ghosty stuff you expect to see. At times, even with certain characters, the film is very reminiscent of "Insidious", but with a more scientific research edge. The cinematography is great. The real horror parts don't show up till the 50 minute mark. Then the film spirals into more Clive Barker territory.

Overall I have some mixed thoughts towards "Inner Ghosts". I loved the story, very interesting and layered. I thought the acting was strong. I do feel that the film runs a little too long, spends too much time on the melodrama character structure for the first 50 minutes. The last 40 is impactful and hits the horror elements strong, but during the ending the story become confusing, just a bit. Still the film is a strong indie paranormal thriller.

So, story goes that Helen is a medium who gave it up to study the "spiritual" element in living humans as means to communicate with those that don't have the ability to manage their memory and cognitive process well enough, such as in the case of dementia. But first she has to practice on ghosts. This produced a hysterical scene of Helen giving a ghost a mini-mental status exam question. Priceless! But, alas, poor Helen becomes fixated on the communication with ghosts and training two others who have psychic abilities. (This film posits that one can develop psychic abilities if you have the beginning abilities and are open to expanding on these.) She is rebuked by her partner (is it a business venture? an academic setting? I'm not certain.) as it isn't profitable to build research and sellable applications using ghost communication as a basis. This all leads to more improbable boring material as 3-D printing becomes essential to the process of communicating with the deceased. Somehow. This one I feel is more to be blamed on the contrivances of the script and the lazy plot points to get to the end of the story with their "shocker" of a turn of events. Hohum.

So, this movie was terrible, but over 10 minutes of strobe lights at the end?! Please don't watch this if strobe lights bother you. I had to leave the room.

If you're looking for horror you won't find it here. The Demon never does anything significant, and nothing truly happens. Try if you like, but you've been warned.

I wish I could say something nice, since I know some of the people involved. Unfortunately, the main storyline is the only good thing about this movie, it is quite novel and interesting. But as soon as you start diving into it, it goes to hell (and not in a good way). Some of the acting is laughable, I mean the villain looks like Santa Claus (he's so cute) and the other actors are also not believable. The extras are sooooo bad. The whole movie is just... Terrible, and not all can be justified by the small budget. The final sequence is so bad they had to add 10 minutes of strobing light to make it somewhat impactful. The only impact it had was me wanting to run off the theater. But I sucked it up to see the movie end. It wasn't worth it. Definitely avoid, specially if you're epileptic.