The St. Francisville Experiment

I think the people behind this "true" documentary film saw both The Blair Witch Project and the Fox Family Channel Special of "The Scariest Places on Earth" in the same day. Sorry guys, but this was not as entertaining as 3 people being stalked in the woods, or a family locked inside of an English castle for the night. My thoughts:

• Madison is more annoying than Heather ever was.

• Somebody just needed to tell Ryan to shut up.

• If Paul stood on the stairs one second longer contemplating aboug going back into the attic...I would've thrown a chair at him.

• You should've rehearsed the "spontaneity" of the ending more

• The house looked as if the family living there had gone out to grab take-out and would be back any second.

On the upside though, Tim is a real cutie.

Next time out, leave the 3 students alone, and let Linda Blair handle the "family locked inside a haunted house for the night" concept, and come up with an idea that is actually yours.

My grade: D-

Never in my movie watching experience have I ever seen a picture so horrible. This poor excuse for a horror film is deplorable. The over-acting by each of the cast members would cause Bella Lugosi to roll in his grave! The effects are all cheap and staged as well as the dialog. This film should be taken off the shelves and burned at the stake. To anyone who went to the theaters or rented this (yours truly included) we should demand Hollywood use this film as a standard to never, never let a movie be this bad.

Ted Nicolaou made a lot of great horror and fantasy films. I am looking for all his films to see. I could not find this one for 3 year, until I unexpectedly found it in youtube. To tell the truth I wanted to see more ghosts and less talks here. It looks like in 1999-2001 Ted had a crisis , maybe in money. His features of this time look more like real low budget thrash z garbage movies. But I do not claim him to be a bad director this time . Everything happens. The ending has some nice creepy details and suspense but the whole film was long dull dialogues .

only for real Ted's fans.

www.myspace.com/neizvestnostlab

I know a lot of people seem to have a passionate hatred for this film. After all, it was made to cash in on the success of The Blair Witch Project. But to be fair, the film industry does this all the time, taking a popular film and its ideas & themes, then running them completely into the ground.

But who really cares about that crap, as long as the film is good. I do not claim to possess an intricate knowledge of filmmaking; I simply like what I like and don't care if other people laugh at me and think I'm stupid for enjoying what they consider bad cinema.

When I first watched The St. Francisville Experiment in college with a couple of my friends, I was totally drawn into the film. For the hour+ that it was on I was completely engrossed in the goings on of the four characters as they try to determine whether or not the house is haunted. Granted, the acting certainly wasn't Oscar-caliber, but the cast was believable enough to keep my attention for the duration of the film. They exuded enough of a naive charm that I found them likeable and wanted them to come out of the house unscathed.

Perhaps most important of all involving a haunted house film was that I found the film scary. It's been quite a while since I've felt fear from watching a film, having my skin break out in goosebumps. And this movie did it for me, and I can't thank them enough.

Ripoff or not, I like this film! It has believable characters, a cool back story based on true events, eerie atmosphere, and an overall feeling of doom and horror. I like this film even more than The Blair Witch Project (which is itself somewhat of a ripoff of Cannibal Holocaust), and I am not ashamed to say that.

I watched this movie last night, it was horrible. They took what could have been a scary situation, and made it stupid. The women were much more annoying than the guys, because they were all stereotypes of people. Madison kept talking about the "white light" that surrounded them, but no one ever asked what she was talking about, they just let her go with it. And after a few "purifications" that obviously didn't work they decide on the classic cliche of splitting up, and trying them seperated from each other?!?!?. The scares were all jumpy scares "oh no something jumped out in front of me", nothing with actual fright value. There are also scenes where doors open for people....and they go in them! And spaces open in the floor, or they find a hole and they STICK THEIR HANDS IN THEM WITHOUT BEING ABLE TO SEE!! Yeah right... Also the fact that people lived in the house, and yet these people didn't get rid of the "bloody medical equipment" in the basement, or seal up a hole in the wall, make it seem more staged. And finally they are standing in the house for five minutes before they try turning on a light, when I, a normal person, go into a house that's the first thing I do.