We Are Still Here (2015)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Sorry, this movie sucks

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

31 Days of Spookoween: DAY EIGHTFilm #8: We Are Still Here (2015)Review: "We Are Still Here" is one of those modern indie horror flicks that seem to be helping resurrect the genre. It is jam packed with obvious flaws and occasionally falls into the easy entrapment of cliché, but it makes up for these problems by packing a real punch in its climax and by retaining a sense of mystery and intrigue throughout. The atmosphere and silence of the film is golden, some sequences are brilliantly minimalist, and the cinematography is absolutely stunning! The special effects range in quality, but most of the gore towards the end is really fun and is pulled off very well, while the more tragic and horrific side of the film is never overshadowed by the possible silliness these effects could infiltrate into the film. The performances are mostly sort of mediocre, while some of them are quite good and others are pretty bad, but it doesn't harm the film all too much. Parts of it are so slow it becomes boring, but by the end I was grateful for this because it makes the wild finale all the more exciting! The concept, at first, feels very cliché, but as the film continues and plenty more twists and turns are established, it becomes a rather clever melding of various genre tropes that successfully come together to create a haunting and creepy premise in its own right. While not a very scary movie overall, there are certainly moments of tensity, which lead towards a final feeling of "true" horror. It's not really a masterpiece, but it is clear that the filmmakers behind this one have the potential to make a masterpiece sometime in the near future.

When I came across "We Are Still Here", I was browsing through the horror movie selection. I had not heard about this movie prior to happening to find it by sheer luck. I noticed that Barbara Crampton was in the movie, and I did enjoy watching all the horror movies that she starred in during the mid- and late-80s, especially all the Lovecraftian movies that she starred in. So I decided to watch "We Are Still Here" without even reading the synopsis.The storyline presented in "We Are Still Here" is rather generic if you have grown up with horror movies, as I have. That being said, I am not saying that the storyline was bad, but it was just something that has been seen before in many other horror movies. Writer and director Ted Geoghegan did hit the nail right on the head, because the movie worked out quite well on many levels.As for the acting in the movie, well it was actually nice to see Barbara Crampton back on the screen in a horror movie such as this, because it definitely had roots in the classic way of making horror movies. It was also nice to see Andrew Sensenig, although I wasn't familiar with him prior to this movie, but he really performed well and added a great deal of flavor to his role and character. Monte Markham also made for a short appearance, and he is always a familiar face on the screen."We Are Still Here" has a good character gallery, as the characters are well-detailed and fleshed out on the screen. They have distinct personalities and traits. It was interesting characters that did add a good amount of worth to the storyline.The special effects in the movie were good, convincing and believable. The movie wasn't an abundance of special effects, which some movies tend to be. However, despite the scarcity of the special effects, the practical and CGI effects in the movie were functional, effective and to the point in bringing the storyline to life on the screen.The music score used in the movie was rather simplistic, but it worked so marvelously for the movie, because it was very atmospheric and mood setting. The music that accompanied the scenes really helped bring the setting of the movie and the atmosphere of the movie to life.All in all, "We Are Still Here" is an adequate horror movie, though it wasn't particularly scary. But it had a really good atmosphere to it.

I decided to give this movie a chance after finding it in my local library's DVD collection. Sometimes I find hidden gems this way, but this time that was not the result. It's a somewhat slow moving exercise that feels quite stretched out, despite the running time being just eighty three minutes long. The filmmakers might have fixed that problem had they simply taken the time to answer a lot of questions that come up but are simply not answered. The direction is a little better than the script. You do feel the cold and isolation of the setting, and there is often a mildly creepy feeling. And patient gorehounds will be rewarded with some striking splatter in the movie's last half hour. However, I am at a loss as to why the movie was set in the 1970s. Though the period detail is acceptable, I would have preferred that the filmmakers taken the time and money devoted to recreating decades past to punch up the story instead. While the movie is not aggressively bad, it all the same feels half- hearted and unfinished, so I think most viewers will feel unsatisfied.

(SPOILERS)"Haunted house" movies are everywhere: Poltergeist, The Conjuring, Paranormal Activity, Insidious, The Amittyville horror, Sinister (just to name a few above-average ones). They all follow the same formula, some much better than others. We Are Still Here does follow the basic outline of this formula to some extent, but does so with its own spin. I found it particularly refreshing that the main characters were not the typical happy middle-class family reluctantly moving into a new house or group of college kids going on a trip of sex and drugs, but rather an older couple struggling to cope with the death of their son. It starts as a slow burn thriller, building on the creepy atmosphere before jumping into a riotous third act that is borderline Evil Dead-level insanity. I like leaving things to the imagination as much as the next horror-fan, but the appearance of the charred, zombie- like ghosts was creepy and effective. The first reveal (showing the ghost through the reflection of the picture) was a very effective jump- scare. However, one of my major complaints was the unnecessary and annoying use of so-called "jump-scare music". Adding in noises that the characters do not hear, but the audience does, is a cheap way of making the jump-scares louder and "scarier". By doing this, there is no strategic use of visual surprise or peak of quiet tension, but merely a streak of silence followed by a loud bang. Case in point: there is a scene where a portrait in the background falls, accompanied by the infamous, clustered "BOO-CLICK-CLACK-BANG-HISS" sound. It's a shame because many of the jump scares presented in the film had the potential to be effective and frightening, but the jump music makes it come off as cheap and lazy. Another problem I had was the expositional dialogue. The way information is presented was too straight-forward and aimed to plainly elucidate. It's a minor complaint, but I got annoyed every time characters would say things that were clearly forced exposition. We Are Still Here isn't perfect, but it has believable characters, a spooky atmosphere, and a slow, steady buildup followed by a finale that anyone with a love for gory splatter-fests of the 80's will surely appreciate due to the practical effects, homages to classic films (including a very pronounced Nightmare On Elm Street reference), and overall insanity reminiscent of The Evil Dead and Silent Hill. As someone who is, admittedly, not the biggest fan of ghost/paranormal movies, I was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed this.