AN AMERICAN GHOST STORY (2012)

Studio:       Breaking Glass Pictures
Director:    Derek Cole
Writer:       Stephen Twardokus
Producer:  Jon Gale, Stephen Twardokus, Derek Cole
Stars:     Stephen Twardokus, Liesel Kopp, Cain Clifton, Jon Gale, Wendy Haines

Review Score: 

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Summary:

Desperate to find a bestselling story, a struggling writer attempts to bring out the ghosts in a supposedly haunted house. 

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Day 1 – Struggling writer Paul moves into a house after hearing stories that it supposedly became haunted when a man killed his wife and children there before killing himself. Paul’s girlfriend Stella moves in with him. Paul asks Stella to help him decorate the home as an exact recreation to make the spirits more active. Paul tells her that a child who died there was named Tom. At night, Stella hears a noise and a door opens on its own. The next day, Paul shows his friend Sam a collection of newspaper clippings about the house.

Day 9 – Stella hears noises while she showers. While restoring a radio in the garage, a basketball thrown against the wall by someone unseen startles Paul. Back in the house, the kitchen cabinets open by themselves, which scares Stella. When Paul comes inside, he sees the kitchen chairs arranged in a stack on the table. Stella demands to leave, but Paul asks her to wait until morning. Paul awakens to a note from Stella. He calls her and she says that she does not want to return to the house.

Day 23 – Awoken by whispering voices, Paul searches the house, but finds nothing. He reads an email from Sam that is rigged with an audio scare as a prank. While he sleeps afterwards, a bed sheet forms the shape of a person.

Day 31 – Homeowner Skip visits Paul for the rent money. Visibly shaken by being inside the house, Skip dances around Paul’s questions about previous tenants and ghosts. During the night, Paul investigates more strange noises and finds a windup toy and a stuffed animal that appears in different places.

Day 47 – Paul contacts previous residents, but no one is willing to speak with him. He tries visiting previous tenant Sue Dryer, who is noticeably disturbed, but she slams her door in his face. Paul leaves his business card in Sue’s mailbox.

Day 55 – Paul contemplates in Tom’s bedroom.

Day 77 – Paul bemoans the lack of paranormal activity to Sam. That night, the bed sheets form the shape of a person again. The following day, Sue calls Paul and agrees to an interview. She tells Paul that the spirits in the house drove her marriage apart. Her husband and her son never saw the ghosts that she did, although her son did have an imaginary friend named Tom. Sue’s husband used her claims of a haunting to wrest custody of their son away from her. Before Tom leaves, Sue pleads with him to leave the house. Back at home, Paul’s antique radio plays by itself and a chair moves on its own. Something unseen also grabs a dropped flashlight. Paul suspects Tom’s ghost.

Day 95 – Paul shouts angrily at the presence in the home and randomly drapes a bed sheet throughout the air. Eventually, the bed sheet forms the shape of a person that then chases Paul throughout the house and moves objects supernaturally. The encounter ends when the spirit throws Paul through a glass door. Paul moves into a new loft and has Sam collect his things from the house. While Paul unpacks at his new place, a bed sheet rises suddenly from a moving box.

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Review:

With its simple one floor suburban architecture and modern furnishings that lend all the personality of a pre-fabricated home, “An American Ghost Story” takes place in possibly the least frightening haunted house to ever appear onscreen.  Which is ironically fitting since “An American Ghost Story” happens to be one of the least engaging horror films to ever have its underside seared by a DVD laser.

Apart from presumably taking place somewhere in the United States, what makes this particular ghost story uniquely “American” is anyone’s guess.  In a performance whose believability lies somewhere between the Tooth Fairy and the Loch Ness Monster, Stephen Twardokus, who also wrote the screenplay, plays struggling writer Paul.  Desperately in search of inspiration for a bestseller, Paul has the bright idea to move into a supposedly haunted house that was once the site of a brutal murder-suicide.

The haunted house is more of a haunted room.  The production design is claustrophobic out of necessity from being crammed into a compact location with a nondescript interior.  Actors are often framed with their heads pressed against walls and the camera is jammed so far in their faces that their noses might smear the lens if they ever turned their heads.

Joining Paul for his paranormal party is a parade of purposeless people.  Liesel Kopp is burdened with forced laughter and vanilla dialogue as Paul’s girlfriend Stella.  When the kitchen cabinet doors open by themselves, Stella shrieks, “I can’t live in this house anymore!” through choking sobs as if she had just experienced six straight months of The Amityville Horror.  She drops out of sight completely at the 30-minute mark, never to be seen again.

A jackhammer to the face has more subtlety than the characterization of an emotionally broken previous tenant.  Wendy Haines’ Sue wears a rosary, clutches another rosary, and drinks from a mug emblazoned with a visage of the Virgin Mary.  She then collapses to her knees while repeatedly muttering the Hail Mary, just in case her religious dependence was not already crystal clear.  At least her two scenes have more to do with the story than that of Skip, the man who rents the house to Paul.  His character’s primary reason for existence is apparently to give producer Jon Gale a chance to appear onscreen.

Even though “An American Ghost Story” depicts just eight days out of the 95 that Paul spends in the house, the runtime feels like the full three months.  Literally nothing at all happens on day 55.  Paul holds a stuffed animal while sitting on a bed until the movie jumps suddenly to day 77.

Another moment shows a woman preparing tea on the stove that feels like it might be gearing towards a “Final Destination” moment with the way it depicts rising steam and cuts to close-ups of the cups.  It turns out that it really is just a boring scene of a woman preparing a hot beverage.

Content mostly with static shots, the camera rarely moves.  Coupled with the barren interior setting, long scenes of Paul tiptoeing slowly down a short hallway and widening his eyes in feigned surprise make the viewing experience dreadfully dull.  Loud crashes create several jumps, but the length of the drawn out sequences required to hit the payoff makes the attention span investment unrewarding.

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Both the logo and the name for “2 Man Production,” the company responsible for the film, are quite literal.  The graphic depicts an actor and a director, and it appears that these two men truly did make the movie almost by themselves.

According to the credits, the production crew consisted of exactly two production assistants and one director’s assistant.  The director’s assistant shares a last name with director Derek Cole as well as an acting credit for the role of “Young Ghost,” indicating that said assistant was actually a child.  The conspicuous absence of professional grips, gaffers, wardrobe, and representatives from any other department that normally exists on a film set is tellingly obvious in every frame.  Actors reflect light off greasy faces.  Crumpled pages from a Pennysaver constitute moving box props.  Each dark room is illuminated by the same 45-degree angled slash of light.  Indeed, this is a movie made by just two people on a budget scrounged from couch cushions, and it shows.

“An American Ghost Story” is a stale slice of horror browned in an oven of amateur filmmaking with the vain hope that no one will know the difference.  Unsurprisingly, the production comes out as stiff, dry, and tasteless as a piece of unbuttered white toast.  The tagline on the box art reads, “some things are better left alone.”  This film is one of those things.

NOTE: "An American Ghost Story" was previously known by the title “Revenant.”

Review Score:  15

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