Alone in the Ghost House (2015)

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Reality TV show star Lana (well played with infectiously bubbly aplomb by Joni Durian), her husband Anthony (likable John Bradley Hambrick), and several others decide to spend the night in the legendary haunted abode The Devil's Commune. Naturally, the group get a lot more than they bargained for.Director Henrique Couto takes full advantage of the found footage premise, keeps the engrossing story moving along at a zippy pace, takes time to develop the characters so that the viewer truly cares about what happens to them, and even tosses in a little gratuitous T&A for good tasty'n'trashy measure. The clever script by Couto and John Oak Dalton not only pokes witty fun at the contrived nature of reality television programs, but also comes through with a real chilling doozy of a surprise grim ending. The sound acting from the able cast keeps this picture humming: Iabou Windimore makes a favorable impression as spunky artist Sophie, Erin P. Ryan really sinks her teeth into her juicy role as flaky medium Tabitha, and Couto himself acquits himself nicely as amiable wisecracking cameraman Ford. The deliberately rough cinematography adds an invigorating sense of raw immediacy and authenticity. A neat little fright flick.

Normally I'm not a big fan of found footage movies as they can be very predictable. I was very pleased to find this movie NOT predictable! I enjoyed seeing various types of cameras used as well as seeing the footage itself vary between type of camera. Some found footage movies suffer from having different cameras yet they all look exactly the same.Another enjoyable item was not seeing the cameraman, Ford, for a big chunk of time. We knew who he was, he interacted with the other characters, but was never seen until about 15 minutes into the film and it was mainly on accident. After that the viewer began to see him more often but it was nice to have that extra mystery.The only problem I had with the film is that there were a few opportunities where a small change could have made the scene from a great scene to a fantastic scene. I don't want to go into details as to not spoil anything, but one involves the timing of a practical joke that could have been moved up to get the most jump from the viewer. As the joke was laid out in the film it worked great for the scene and got the desired effect! One thing that was impressive was how each of the character was fleshed out in ways that aren't shoved down the viewer's throat. Main example is we get a very small snippet of Ford on the phone that completely shifts how you can perceive his character, and the scene itself wasn't important to the plot and could even be viewed as an unimportant scene, yet it worked perfectly for what we knew about Ford.The acting itself was great as usual with most of director Couto's films. Erin R Ryan did a great job in her role as an eccentric medium. Joni Durian was able to capture the essence of documentarians with a wide-eyed look that pushes extra emphasis to key words.