Alone In the Ghost House (2015)

(out of 5)

Alone In the Ghost House (2015)

directed by:  Henrique Couto

starring:  Henrique Couto, Joni Duran, Erin Ryan, John Hambrick, Iabou Windimere, Adam Clevenger

format:  Private Screener

tagline:  They wanted fame they found Pure Evil

The Movie:  Couto is a favorite of mine.  I love his crew, his humor, and his genre jumping indie filmmaking.  Meaning the man is slowly taking on other genres besides horror these days which I truly respect.  Especially since he's one of the only one's doing this right now.  This one is a horror of course and it is one of my favorite sub-genres of scary movies called Found Footage.  We start out with a skeleton crew of ghost hunters out to make a name for themselves spending the night in different haunted houses.  First inside the house of woman who killed herself and her newborn baby Lana (Joni Duran) and her husband Derek Roberts (John Hambrick) search through the old house in search of paranormal

activity along with their witty camera man Ford (Henrique Couto).  After a bit of a success and failure the three of them head off to pick up Lana's old college roommate Sophie (Iabou Windimere) to shoot another show.  Once we get to the final destination known as the Devil's Commune our small group meets up with Tabitha a psychic played by my all time favorite indie actress Erin Ryan and that's when things start to really get weird.  Tabitha starts to freak out, gets lost in a cornfield, and has some sort of seizure in the middle of a type of séance.  From there it just escalates ending up with a few dead bodies.  But per usual I'm leaving the rest up to you.  Loved the climax.

The Acting:  Superb on all accounts.  I have to believe my characters and yes in this film I believed everyone beginning to end.  Really wasn't a weakest link here either I mean obviously I am always bias with Ms. Ryan but honestly Joni, John, Iabou, Henrique, and Adam all did very well playing their parts.  John Hambrick was the breakout I guess for me I really enjoyed his inclusion in the cast and he played his character with a nice range of emotions beginning to end.  I have to admit as a superfan of Erin Ryan it was neat seeing her play the role she played in this film, most especially her final scene which you all will just have to wait and see what I'm talking about here...you will not be disappointed.

The Gore:  Not so much.  Not really called for either but we do get a smattering of the red stuff thrown around a bit.  Not gore so much but again not called for here.

The Script:  Well there is a lot of dialogue in this one as is with all found footage movies or most of them because much of the time there isn't much else to do but talk while one of the characters holds the camera the entire movie.  This I don't mind.  Provided the dialogue is worth listening to and I found myself interested and even laughing at moments given the antics of Ford.  Some back and forth between Sophie (Iabou Windimere) and Ford with one scene in particular I found greatly entertaining.  Joni narrated a lot of the ghost hunting scenes and this too I felt went very natural and similar to real life reality shows of this sort.  All in all great script and story-line.  The movie definitely leaves you guessing till the very end.

The Rating:  4 out of 5 Bloody Handprints for the simple fact that I kept thinking about it.  I was going to go with three and a half at first but really the movie lasted more than 24 hours in my head so Mr. Couto has done his job in this one have to go with 4 here.