I bought this movie for two reasons: (1) It has the stupendous Betsey Brown in it, and (2) It's supposed to be a unique kind of ghost story.
During the opening credits, I did not see Brown's name. I'm thinking, Maybe this was a blunder on my part. Then, literally four minutes in, I officially hate all the characters. Two girls are drooling over a guy with a man-bun, who hardly has enough hair for one (which is beside the point, dude has a man-bun). It soon becomes crystal clear that this is easily one of the most superficial group of friends ever put in a horror movie (I had to laugh at the overabundance of genres imdb has picked out to describe this snoozer, giving it far, FAR too much credit), and Lace Crater is 81 solid minutes of the most inane conversations you will ever hear (that is, of the ones you CAN hear). I would not be in the least bit surprised if this movie turned out to be 100% improvised by inexperienced student actors (though Peter Vack appears as Michael, the "ghost," wrapped in burlap who can do normal physical things, and looks and talks like a regular guy).
So this group of friends stay at a house in the Hamptons. And Ruth (Lindsay Burdge, who is saddled with the task of carrying this abortion) is fresh off a breakup, and could use the time away... though I was under the impression her ex was on the trip. Go figure. So she claims the "haunted" room, and shacks up with Michael the ghost. The rest of the movie is her getting sick with side-effects, and her so-called friends turn on her!
Honestly, I don't know if I've ever groaned and rolled my eyes more times than during this movie. These are insanely shallow people to follow, though Burdge does her best with the extremely limited material. Oh, everyone's into drugs, so there are endless opportunities to go trippy and/or artsy. One has to assume the filmmakers are on board here. There is one adult in the entire movie, Ruth's doctor, and he is a Grade-A moron. The director is credited for writing, too, so if I were to believe actual dialogue was written for this movie, I would have to assume the director just graduated elementary school. All the kids speak in the same manner. That is, the dialogue is positively peppered with "or whatevers," "you knows," and "likes." So if, like, you're into that king of thing or whatever, you know, you might like it. Even the ghost spoke like the living! It's "like," enough already.
In one scene that goes on for several minutes, there are a good 4 conversations going on at once, and you can't understand or follow ANY of them. Why was I subjected to this? As for the reasons I bought Lace Crater, this hardly qualifies as a horror film (aside from the genuinely horrific dialogue). Young woman gets sick, is that it? And I blinked and missed Betsey Brown. I'm guessing she was at Ruth's disloyal friend's party. Maybe she was the one who had to pick out the "hottest" guy? I'm not sure, but one thing is blatantly clear: They gave her nothing to do in this movie.
Finally, the insulting ending. What else is going to happen to her? You follow her get sick, and ostracized by all her friends. There is nothing clever in the movie, so it's going to end in an unclever way. So there's a little more story after the end, where... ABSOLUTELY NOTHING happens. Then they bait you through the credits, where the camera turns, and... Nothing to see here folks! Dismal. And there are critics on board, because, I don't know, it gets artsy? So it must be important!
I've seen other movies that were labeled as "mumble core," and I don't remember them being quite so insipid.
Edit: I bumped this up a star, because the lead is good, it's the material that's not.
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