A Date With Ghosts
The movie begins with a young woman, getting ready for a date or to go out for the evening. The young lady drives out to what appears to be mansion to meet her friend Lee. Upon arriving she realizes Lee is not there, so she gives him a ring. He tells her something happen so he left. Now I have to point out, all of this happens during the day. She drives into town to meet Lee and it is suddenly night time. They decide to go back, where I, not quite sure it was day or night cause of the following scenes are shot with a heavy grey filter.
Lee and the girl (I keep calling her the Girl because at this point I had no idea her name) walk around the grounds of what appears to be a church or monastery. Now what really threw me, was the fact that they drove through the night to get here. The amount of time they spend walking around it is night again. I do not understand how they spent ALL DAY walking around. As the girl is walking around she comes face to face with a monk whose eyes and mouth are black holes. She is smart enough to get scared and run back to Lee. He tells her he said, “Not to come back here.” To which she responds, “The police said they would be here.” At this point I was amazed that she has just seen something that obviously could not be human and still believed the police will be of help. Yet they still decide to walk around with a flash light and baseball bat in hand, ALONE.
They finally make their way inside to find all the power and lights work in the “abandoned” monastery. They hear a noise from outside and hide. At this point we see another monk who is a ghost, how do I know you ask? Because they use a low budge computer trick to make him see through. He then becomes solid and makes his way to the alter. The film jumps back to Lee and his friend exploring, they find a room with several severed body part and a girl tied up in a coffin. Chloe tells her the monks are ghost and they are trying to open a gateway to somewhere. At this point Lee goes missing. As they are walking through the woods Chloe randomly finds and axe (I say randomly because in one scene she has no axe and in the next boom axe) Chloe and the girl make their way back to the church (Their word not mine) where they find Lee and the stuff really hits the fan. I won’t give away anymore. We follow Chloe and the girl for a bit longer than the screen fades to black and PART 2 is shown in the screen.
Part two jumps from color to black and white to color, it picks up following the girl who I guess in now a ghost with a lot of screen time showing the walls of the castle. Finally when it cuts to this girl who wakes up and her older brother in a cave. In the cave they find some paper cover with strange writing.
All in all the movie is very erratic, in every aspect. The camera is constantly changing from first person/found footage to trying to be shot like a normal film. The sets change too, it is like the director couldn’t get a permit to shoot inside the same church twice or for more than one day. The special effects look like they were bought at party city or from an online Halloween close out sale. The acting is one of the brighter points of the film, along with the sound track which does give that eerie effect we all crave. In my opinion though the best part about the film (even though I doubt it is what the director was going for) is the director really captures a lot of beautiful nature scenery and architecture of these buildings and surrounding country side.
In closing, if you’re a fan of campy special effects and won’t get motion sickness from a shaky camera, the plot and the acting actually make the film watchable. But be warned it is a bit erratic in its story telling so be warned early on you might feel lost and confused.
reviewed by Shawn
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