Director: Charlie Comparetto
Writer: Charlie Comparetto
Stars: Kelli Berglund, Jake Busey, Olivia Larsen
1 Hour, 33 Minutes
Amazon Book Link: https://amzn.to/2qvhn2I
Watch the review on the Horror Guys YouTube show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAyVaYDMyBo
Synopsis
A group of little kids gather together in the cemetery to play a game called “Ghost in the graveyard.” It’s some kind of variation on hide and seek plus tag, and Sally plays a little too well, making everyone stay until after dark. Little Martha, one of the kids, falls into a grave and is killed.
We move ahead ten years, and all the little kids are now seniors in high school. Sally has come home from somewhere, and she’s been gone a long while.
A different group of kids want to take a shortcut through the graveyard, but legend says the little girl’s ghost still haunts the place. One kid is brave enough to proceed, and he does see a girl getup off the ground near a headstone. He freaks out and crashes his bike. He is then beaten to death.
They go to a Catholic school, and one of their classes is talking about the book of Revelation. The teacher wants Sally to read a long passage. After class, Zoe and her “friends” welcome her back, and she reiterates that she was not in the psych ward, but she doesn’t want to talk about it. Some of her “friends” are going up to the woods after school, and Sally is invited. Zoe and Sally are both interested in the same guy, Reed.
The police are investigating the murdered boy. Someone with bare feet dragged the boy’s body into a mausoleum and desecrated it. It’s some kind of Satanic ritual. Sally visits Martha’s grave, and the police see her there.
A child’s arm comes out from beneath Sally’s bed and gives her a box. Inside the box is her birth certificate, and there’s something on there that she doesn’t like or didn’t know.
All the other kids at school have heard that the boy’s murder happened right after Sally came home, and they put two and two together and assume she was involved. One incident after another leads us to realize that she sees the little girl, and no one else does.
About this time, a letter arrives from the “Sisters of the Seven Demons,” and the letter asks if all preparations have been made for her return. The sheriff is acting funny, and so is her father, who in his spare time reads books on human sacrifice.
People get more and more creepy toward Sally, especially Zoe’s mother. There are clearly some big secrets in this town.
Of course, for the climax, everyone involved convenes in the cemetery, and also not unexpectedly, all Hell breaks loose…
Commentary
Thirty minutes in, and it becomes clear that this is a “is it real or is she imagining all this” kind of story. Except that nearly everyone else does appear to be involved in a conspiracy, so we know there’s more going on than Sally just being crazy.
How much did they have to pay Jake Busey to play a normal, sensible guy? Does he charge more or less for that? The acting here was all just fine, although we didn’t realize Busey was playing her father until nearly the end of the movie. We assumed she was being raised by her two older brothers. The ages of the actors really don’t mesh up very well.
Whose baby was that on the second floor that made a couple of appearances? Again, the relationships between characters are not clearly defined. Was this Sally’s baby? The father’s? The brother’s? Someone else?
The filmmakers tried to keep everything mysterious up until the end, unfortunately, the various loose ends and mysteries from the first half didn’t really tie in much with the ending. It makes sense that Martha’s ghost was there to help Sally, but what’s all the nonsense about the Biblical bloodline for? What were the witches hoping to accomplish? What happened all those years ago, and why did any of it matter?
This was based on a book series, so I have no idea how close this is to the book, but the film is way too disjointed to really make a lot of sense as a one-part standalone film. I have too many questions, and the film didn’t wrap up the right ones. The last few minutes set this up for a sequel, but I really doubt we’ll see more of this.
DarkCoast will release the film onto digital platforms Nov. 5th (Amazon, Hoopla, Vimeo on Demand, FANDANGO)