A Savannah Haunting

Plot

A family loses their young daughter in a tragic drowning and moves to Savannah, only to be haunted by her presence in their new home.

Cast

Not familiar with anyone involved but the writer is the director who is a character in the movie and also the person who has allegedly experienced all these paranormal instances.

Verdict

I'm not generally a guy who appreciates ghost themed movies, the reason? They tend to be the most trope laden cliched sub genre of all, and also a one used by those with minimal budgets as they don't require much on screen. A chair falls over by itself, a book falls of a shelf, mysterious noises, it's all very cheap.

Furthermore they often get pretentious and play the "Based on real events" card and I just can't take it seriously. Spoiler alert, no that thing didn't happen grow up. A Savannah Haunting doesn't just play that card, it plays the whole deck an doubles down by being made by the guy it happened to, in the house it supposedly happened and they spouted rhetoric about a haunting on set during production and staff members threatening to leave because of them. Yeah, right.

A Savannah Haunting trips, face plants into every imaginable generic horror trope get's up and goes butt over head back over again with some dreadful quality, mediocre performances and a finale that you will see coming from three continents over.

Rants

I'm going to break this to you gently, rip that bandaid off in one single smooth motion. There are no such things as ghosts, no spectres, no poltergeists, no phantoms, no things that go bump in the night. In the nicest way possible, grow up.

The Good

Considering the budget it wasn't the worst looking

The Bad

Cliche and trope ridden Couldn't be less original Hit and miss cast Very predictable Based on "Real" events in a supernatural movie is just silly.

I'm sure there are some that will find this movie entertaining and while it wasn't a complete bore, personally, I've seen much better.

There's nothing new here, surprise, that you haven't seen before. It's amazing that these derivative movies continue to get made. Perhaps it's because there will always be an audience regardless of the lack of originality or the hope that this one will finally be different.

These are not spoilers as most viewers will arrive at the same conclusions or be left asking the same questions. Why always a doll and one that won't go away? Is this doll Annabelle's sister? Were the Warrens too busy to check this house out? Could the realtor be sued for not telling the prospective buyers about the homes haunted past? I mean, who would actually buy a home like that if they knew? And what's with the nude pool scene? That seemed so out of place and it really went nowhere. It left me thinking that the writer didn't have a long enough script so he threw that in there to make up the difference.

Act 3 raises the tension bar some but lacks any closure. It leaves us asking more than one question. Not a very satisfying denouement. I've watched other horror movies several times but this one, won't get a second viewing from me.

There was some potential here for sure and it was lightly entertaining, but know that there is almost zero originality in this one. It felt like an amalgamation of every horror trope and cliché that you've ever seen being used as building blocks to create a generally mediocre film.

Now, while that sounds harsh, this wasn't totally unsuccessful. It held my attention enough and I was intrigued by said potential. I think two things that largely held it back were it's run time and the acting.

This one definitely dragged and I think with some editing and shortening providing for a more concise run, it would've been more successful. Also, the acting was generally unsuccessful and unconvincing. The stilted performances all around were distracting and pulled you out of the story. I think if you are able to look past these two major variables there is potential to be had.

This was mostly sitting at a 4 for me but I think it was recovered a bit largely due to the third act. It ended up becoming a bit more interesting and a bit more spooky. 4.5 rounding up to a 5 and I would only recommend if you have patience and a love for truly indi cinema.

Well, the cover for this 2021 horror movie wasn't really screaming - pardon the pun - of overly impressive horror movie. Yet, I still opted to sit down and watch it here late in 2022, as I happened to stumble upon it. Now, I hadn't heard about the movie when I sat down to watch it, so I didn't know what I was in for, aside from it being a horror movie.

I will say that writer and director William Mark McCullough was definitely on to something here, because there was potential in the storyline. However, the narrative was just too slow paced and the movie didn't have enough of exciting things happening to keep it interesting. And that made for a somewhat tedious viewing experience.

The acting performances in "A Savannah Haunting" were good, so it really was a shame that the actors and actresses didn't have a more compelling and exciting script to bring to life on the screen.

Visually then this movie was adequate. It is a movie that makes use of simplistic effects to layer the movie with scares. It works out well enough, but the special effects and practical effects could only do so much to lift up the monotonous and mundane pacing and subpar script.

"A Savannah Haunting" definitely had potential to be a good and proper horror movie, but sadly it was butchered by the pacing and the lack of excitement.

My rating of "A Savannah Haunting" lands on a very generous four out of ten stars.

There is not a single redeeming quality to this movie. There is not the tiniest little glimmer or scrap of originality, creativity, though, or lasting impression to be found. I am actually impressed at how every. Single. Thing. Was some kind of horror joke stereotype. I'm not just referring to the plot, but every camera shot, every setting, every character, line, "big twist reveal", even the line delivery and the expressions of the actors is somehow the exact same thing that is in a thousand other horror movies. Once again, I'm almost surprised that they were able to take every single trope from every single horror movie and combine it into one 1hr 40min string of cliche, after cliche that felt like being slapped across the face with a wet fish with every horribly overdone line, character, and camera shot that you feel you've seen hundreds of times before. It's such drivel that I genuinely considered it to be satire poking fun at all the tropes that so many horror movies use. But unfortunately I don't think so. They either really committed to the bit or everyone involved is so lacking of self awareness that they somehow can't realize that they've basically made nothing. Nothing as in something that is just purely devoid of anything interesting. I don't even know that I believe someone actually wrote this movie. I think they may have just rounded up some actors, handed out zero script, said two words to them all, "haunted house", and did everything in one take while everyone just kept saying the most generic lines off the top of their head. The only way you could ever have even a sliver of an enjoyable time with this movie is to get some friends together and just mystery science theater it, making fun of it throughout. Maybe make some "generic horror trope" bingo cards that would get filled up after just ten minutes. But even then it's still hard to sit through, and really I say just do not waste your time.