I can say without doubt that this it my favourite film Marina Sirtis has been in (other than the Star Trek films of course)! I loved it. Excellent film-making too! A supernatural drama is how I would define this. Laura Lee and her daughter, Kelly (Lauren Birkell), go on a summer vacation to get to know each other again, after Kelly's attempted suicide. This would be a basic premise for a family drama but a supernatural twist is added to the plot. In the moment Kelly died before being revived, her spirit became lost and mixed up with Renee's (Linda Park's character) and Kelly takes on some of Renee's traits and attracts further spiritual attention (in other words ghosts). Marina displays some of her greatest acting skills to date, in my opinion. When the psychic Will (Tucker Smallwood) and psychiatrist Dr. Halsey (Dean Haglund) realise Kelly be brought to the brink of death and be revived to regain her spirit/soul, Laura Lee gets understandably extremely emotional and has to be held by Will. Marina does a fantastic job here; devastation and helplessness are obviously not enjoyable emotions to act (see quotes below for Marina talking about this scene). At certain points in the film Laura Lee is an awful mother, not at all understanding what her daughter is going through. But this must be because she cannot cope with her daughter's attempted suicide! And she is a bit of a b*tch towards Dr. Halsey, when she says, "I'm not the one on your couch, I'm paying you to make us a happy family." But it appears that the supernatural experiences that mother and daughter go through, aid them in bonding with each other by the film's conclusion. The ending is slightly cheesy, with Laura Lee and Kelly a happy family and going off to explore the creek, but I don't have a problem with that. Kelly, Dr. Halsey, Will and all the ghosts are all roles that are cast without flaws. It's always a pleasure to see Marina in anything, Spectres is fabulous though, a perfect project for Marina, and she gets nothing but praise from me for her performance.
DVD Review: The actual film is faultless in quality, but the special features seem to be jumpy, the images jerk around and have lines on sometimes. But it's just a huge bonus to have special features, unlike Marina's other recent films on DVD, Terminal Error and Paradise Lost, which have none. It's lovely when the film company put effort in to it. This has deleted scenes, making of the film, trailers and a clip of filming where they thought the house they filmed in was haunted and something moves behind Marina. But it seems to be just a flash of light, even though the makers insist there was nothing that could produce that light! Oooh!
