Buried Secrets

Not the worst movie I have seen, but I have seen better movie with almost same plot. It was slighly better than average after my opinion.

First i thought it was Sherelyn Fenn in the movie but her name is Tiffani-Amber Thiessen.

Annalisse Vellum (Tiffani-Amber Thiessen) is a young woman who, along with her mother Laura Vellum (Melinda Culea), move back to her mother's hometown, sometime after the death of her father. They rent the home of Laura's old school classmate, Clay Roff (Tim Matheson), whose troubled teenage daughter Mary (Erika Flores) disappeared sometime earlier. Clay invites the two women to dinner at his house, where they meet his current wife, Danielle Roff (Kelly Rutherford), and his young daughter, Heather. Soon after moving in, Annalisse starts having nightmares about a woman falling over a cliff, and is being haunted by the spirit of Mary. Annalisse begins to suspect foul play in Mary's disappearance and the death of Mary's mother, Ann, who she was having the nightmares about. Annalisse is soon suspected of a mental disorder by her mother, Clay and Danielle.

Annalisse becomes interested in a local man, Johnny Toussard (Channon Roe), which upsets Mary's spirit. Clay warns her not to get involved with the dangerous man. Despite these warnings, the two see each other, setting off Mary's wrath. Danielle convinces Annalisse's mother to have her temporarily committed for observation. While Clay watches from outside, Danielle states that Annalisse may be suffering the same mental illness Mary had. When released, Annalisse decides to investigate into Danielle's past; she discovers Danielle was treating and drugging Mary, and suspects she murdered Ann. Mary possesses Annalisse to visit Johnny, confronts her father, and her spirit rides her beloved horse and tramples Danielle, killing her. Clay discovered Danielle had murdered Ann, drugged Mary into a psychotic state, and has been drugging Annalise to keep her silent. Danielle had been having an affair with the then-married Clay; she was pregnant and had been plotting to marry him. Clay had blocked out burying Mary's body by the cliff after he believed she had murdered her mother, then committed suicide. Mary's spirit is now at rest; she thanks Annalisse, saying she will wait for her on the other side, and vanishes. Annalisse reunites with Johnny and is free.

There's nothing particularly outstanding here, but most of the elements of a decent spooky movie are in place. Everyone seems well cast and the production values are alright.

My problem with this movie is mostly the ending, because (keeping it vague to avoid spoilage) the villain leaves before finishing his/her "job" at the crucial moment, then behaves as though the job was finished. That made no sense. Plus the way the villain got taken care of was pretty random and silly. :-)

I would have liked to have seen a bit more relationship development between some of the characters, especially (again keeping it vague) the two reunited family members. That was a key moment and it could have stood a bit more fleshing out emotionally, IMO. I thought that scene ended just a little too soon.

Ultimately, I gave this one a 5 because the general quality of the filmmaking was reasonable (which I think had a lot to do with the solid acting ability of the leads), but I sorta wanted to give it a 4 because it just didn't impress me at all, and with the cast they had, I think it could have been a bit better with a smarter script.

BTW, there's no real gore or anything, aside from a (hallucinated and non-gory) severing of a limb. It's more of a spooky story than a horror film.

This is a pretty fair ghost/possession movie, but a lot of it is ridiculous. How can Tiffani be possessed if she's talking to the ghost. Isn't it supposed to be inside her ? The scares are tame and the story moves along like a run-down car. It stalls, moves, jumps and stalls again. Don't get me wrong, there's almost a decent ghost movie here, but Tiffani's figure seems to take center stage as the camera focuses on her chest, and a nice sight it is, and the viewer is teased with nearly topless scenes, but the plot seems to forget this is supposed to be a movie about a ghost seeking the truth behind her murder. Melinda Culea is all but absent from most of the movie as Tiffani's mother as if the "Shriek If You Know" star was stingy with the screen time and Tim Matheson appears in the movie as the father of the dead girl haunting Tiffani but his scenes are a bit disjointed from the script. This murder mystery as a ghost story does have some chilling moments, but there's no psychological build-up or atmosphere to set the pace. Tiffani instead spends some time dragging down the script by pursuing the boyfriend of the girl's ghost, but then if most girls suddenly looked like Tiffani, I assume they'd be doing the same thing. On the whole, I guess I rate this movie a five for a promising script that quickly gets lost and has to be patched together in the edit room.

Perhaps the creators of this silly spooker believed that, because it concerns an apparition-plagued abode, motivations behind the characters' behavior could be as difficult to grasp as the ghost herself! The actions and situations are often so preposterous that the audience may well be constantly wondering why anyone would do or say what the script just indicated! The open-minded can certainly accept the possibility of a haunting spirit, but one which possesses the living and turns blue eyes brown? Maybe it's about all one can expect from a T-A Thiessen peekaboo boobfest where even the spec shows pec! As always, Tim Matheson gives it the old college try in this half-jelled melodrama that totally wastes his talent and the viewer's time. Please--somebody secretly bury this flick!

If you enjoy human interaction (drama) with a few twists and shocks, you may find this film to be worthwhile. I had not intended to watch a movie as I was channel surfing, but this one drew me in instantly. It's a story about several women whose lives intertwine in a hypnotic tale of deceit, denial and devastation. Two young women from different sides of the "veil" form a bond which leads to the identification of a previously unsuspected killer.

All in all, it's a very satisfying tale centered in a small New England town. A woman, after losing her husband, returns with her daughter to her childhood home town. She's maneuvered into renting the town's "unrentable home." She soon discovers why no one has lived there in many years as her daughter is drawn into the town's darkest secrets.