Don't be fooled by the cover. If seeing translucent ghosts with black eye shadow opening up their mouths in a silent scream, and hearing the creaking of doors opening by themselves sends shivers racing across your skin, then A Haunting at Silver Falls will be a terrifying experience. If not, and you are after something more frightening, you might be better off watching A Haunted Mansion with Eddie Murphy, which proved to be a lot more atmospheric.
This is not to say the film is terrible by any standard, it just isn't the kind of feature that anyone could ever mistake for a horror film, despite the distributor's attempts to pitch it as one. Instead, it is more of an adolescent romance, shrouded by supernatural occurrences, which appears to have qualities reminiscent of the movie Twilight (minus the vampires).
The film has its beneficial qualities that help grasp the audience's attention. Jordan, a teenager, who has recently moved to a new town to live with her aunt and her husband, the only familial members she has left, finds herself inexplicably slipping a ring onto her finger that she finds in the woods one night after attending a party. By doing so, Jordan inadvertently invites the ghost of a woman about her age into her life, who, was horrifically murdered, along with her twin. In order to satisfy the spirit's thirst for justice, Jordan is inevitably spurred into uncovering the identity of the killer.
Over the course of the film, the depth of character development is well orchestrated, which in turn helps conceive likable characters, and the occasionally funny, witty dialogue establishes a sense of comical relief. This aside, there were instances that were not believable, and other aspects of the film that could have been better developed.
The film opens with a young woman, running frantically through the woods, pretending to trip over as she attempts to hide from an unseen attacker; an introduction any horror film fanatic would have seen better executed at least half a dozen times before. Despite this, the opening does manage to build some measure of tension, although it is not effectively executed throughout the majority of the feature. The ghosts we witness in A Haunting at Silver Falls seem too sympathetic and compassionate to be feared. Moreover, Jordan exhibits little terror when confronted by a specter, and because of this, how are we supposed to fear the female equivalent of Casper? However, this criticism aside, these strategies allow the viewers to appreciate the ghosts as people, with human motivations.
Furthermore, the relationship between Jordan and her paramour, Larry, was not a believable sub-plot. On one hand we have Jordan - an utterly gorgeous young woman who could cause the heart of an iceberg to melt, while on the other we have Larry, a Napoleon Dynamite look-a-like, with issues regarding his confidence. No matter how much geeks such as myself would wish for that to be real, women with the above mentioned qualities, rarely, if ever, affiliate romantically with nerds.
On top of this, although the lead antagonist of the plot was not formidable or threatening enough to be taken seriously, this was overshadowed by the predictability. Despite the feature providing the audience with several characters who exhibited suspicious qualities, before the end, it was too obvious who the villain truly was.
A Haunting at Silver Falls is not necessarily a movie you ought to avoid, but it isn't a film that will thoroughly entertain you either, and by the end, your thirst for a horror film will certainly not be quenched. With a plot deserving of more twists and turns, and an atmosphere in need of a far darker ambiance, this is probably a film you will want to rent, rather than purchase.
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