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Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. So, since 2011, I have spent the entire month of October every year reviewing a horror movie each day. I've changed formats many times over the years, and in the past few years, I've even been joined by my wife Solee, as well as the occasional guest. We've got text, drawings, video reviews, audio reviews... we got it all! Wanna check out our reviews? Look below, or use the menu to the left to dig deeper!
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  Belittling Horror Excessively: A Haunting At Silver Falls 11:59 AM -- Thu October 24, 2013  

SPOILER WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

Synopsis: A teenage girl's mother dies, so the mother's twin sister takes over raising her. The girl finds a ring in the woods and puts it on, and then for the rest of the movie, she can't get it off. She then keeps seeing a ghost everywhere she goes. Everybody thinks she's crazy, like they do. Pointing and wiggly heads ensue.

Scariness Type: Well, you've got a ghost following this girl around (or vice versa half the time), but the ghost is just a person in white makeup, with no special effects most of the time. So it's weird, it's like there's just another person in the movie that only she can see, and it's not really creepy at all. Then there are crazed torturers, much scarier than the ghost.

Rating: 2/5 Ghost Slobber.

Body Count: 2

Fun Fact: Ferrero Rocher is so tasty that even ghosts can't resist eating it.

Best Moment: The twist in the last quarter of the movie made it all a lot more fun, real quick. It completely changes what the movie is about, which is good, since the ghost was not very scary.

Worst Moment: That ghost, man... super lame. I just couldn't get over how dumb it was just seeing this white-faced girl walking around. It was like a ghost in a play, not a movie.

A Suspension Bridge Too Far: When the ghosts took the main character for a ride in a school bus, I was sitting there trying to wrap my head around what was actually happening... was it a dream? Was there a ghost school bus that could physically carry her? Was it a real bus they were controlling? How'd she get home afterwards? I could see a driver on it, but they never let you really see him/her, so what was that about? Most of the movie was filled with these "is it real, is it not?" things, but this one just went too far for me (actually I didn't really like any of them, they feel like lazy writing - stuff should have a way to fit into a certain movie reality instead of just saying, "eh, whatever"). I was so busy wondering how the bus worked I don't even remember what she ended up finding when it took her out to the woods.

Horror Tropes: This movie has 3 or 4 "it was only a dream" sequences. Enough already. There's also an old classic: when somebody has a dream about walking in the woods, then they wake up and have dirty feet. I don't really get the metaphysics of that. Did dirt grow on your feet, did you teleport during the dream (usually there's some sort of evidence that you never actually left the bed, so sleepwalking is out), did ghosts collect it and rub it on, are you hallucinating the dirt? We also have a ghost pointing at stuff and wiggling its head around crazily (which just looked really dumb. How do Japanese horror movies make it so disturbing?). And what I believe is the third usage this month of "Ghost does stuff when nobody is around and it's blamed on the main character, who now looks crazy". There should be a short way to say that, but I don't know what it is.

My Take: Nah, it wasn't good. I was going to say it was okay originally, but the more I think about it, the more I feel like it was just dumb. And boy, talk about your conflicts of interest - she goes to see a psychologist, and it's her boyfriend's dad! Who doesn't like her! I can't in good conscience recommend any movie where the ghost just looks like a person in makeup.

Missed Opportunity: Here's the thing... ghosts aren't just people! They're ghostly! It's not just that though, the whole usage of the ghost in this movie was so... normal. Just a person walking around. They missed an ocean of opportunities to be creepy instead of blah.

The Lesson: Don't take in stray rings.

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