Cassadaga (2011)

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Saw this on the Horror Channel at stupid o'clock.It's your standard 'chick with sad past sees spooky sh*t' film. and it has all the clichés, including 'investigating a trap door' and the doomed lone cop-to-the-rescue.But it wasn't terrible.It reminded me of 'I Know Who Killed Me' which is a completely ridiculous film, but I adore it for being so campy and demented.Not sure why the lead is deaf - at times, she can conveniently hear, like when her phone vibrates three feet away from her - also, it's a wee bit transphobic (male character prances about in a dress Buffalo Bill style and makes dollies out of women because Mum didn't like him cross dressing). The puppet-girl effects were impressive though.Worth a try though, if you're an insomniac and it comes on the telly and you have nothing better to do.

CASSADAGA is a movie that tries to have it all but ends up coming away with nothing. It starts out as a traditional ghost story with a deaf girl losing her little sister in a car accident and afterwards finding herself haunted by the spirit of a disturbed spirit. About halfway through it veers off into needless torture porn territory and becomes much, much worse.CASSADAGA has a good sense of creeping dread going for it but that's about all it does have. It lets the lead character be defined by her disability because without that she'd be a totally forgettable and uninteresting person. It doesn't help that the supporting cast are entirely bland in themselves and will quickly disappear from memory once off the screen.The ghostly elements of the film, although predictable, are better handled than the shoddy torture scenes of the most routine serial killer imaginable going about his business trying to make life-life puppets from dead people. It's needlessly unpleasant, and helps sink the whole project. The expected chase scenes between killer and 'final girl' are as routinely staged as possible and the whole film has a familiar Hollywood vibe to it despite it being an independent production.

My kingdom for a half decent horror film! Thinking that I'd cleanse my mind of the initially promising but ultimately abysmal Lovely Molly, I immediately skipped to this one... Only to find it was just the same! A young lad cuts his pecker off in the introduction because he wants to be a girl, and the deaf woman's sister gets herself mown down on the road, and the stage is all set for no-hards-barred gore fun... But NNOOO!!Instead we have to tolerate the cutesy-poo relationship between the hearing impaired lady, one of her sickly-sweet pupils and this schoolgirl's seemingly perfect father, who might as well have Generic Love Interest tattooed on the back of his head. Oh, and his break off of their relationship two-thirds of the way through and his reasons for doing it are utterly nonsensical. Couldn't they pay him enough to stay for the entire film? Same with the uniquely voiced Louise Fletcher, who disappears without a trace too with no explanation. You think we should form a search party?Aside from that, we get sub-standard Sixth Sense style scares, a LOT of running about with no clear motive in mind, and of course the main draw... Girls being abducted and turned into human mannequins. It sounds like fun, and it is... But after a few short interludes of this, its back to the mind numbingly tedious main story, with the hopelessly convoluted antics and CRINGE CRINGE CRINGE dialogue. In fact, it got so painful at times, I wished I was as mutton as the heroine. And if you don't know what I mean, learn to speak Cockney. You Philistine.

Another entry in the After Dark legacy and another one without shock value. The positive thing is the fact that the ghost isn't done with CGI. But again it doesn't has much blood to see and when the ghost appears it is never scary or has any jumpshots. The acting was okay. And you quickly are involved with the characters but what annoyed me the most is the fact that the deaf person talked normal. People who are deaf can't talk like a normal person. The séance where things go wrong is maybe the strongest part. We do fall in some emotional scene's that really doesn't add a thing towards the story. But we don't have only a ghost we also have a killer. All part of the ghost that appeared before her, a woman being killed. So in fact we have a romantic part that takes way too much time in Cassadaga, and that is suddenly stopped towards the end of the flick. We have the mystery of the ghost and a serial killer walking around in Cassadaga. And that's where this flick fails a bit. The combination of those events doesn't work. I'll give it a six due not using CGI for the ghost and here and there some low gore shots.Gore 1/5 Nudity 0,5/5 Effects 3/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5