If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, then you’ll know that I love a good ghost story. I found this movie while wandering through Best Buy on Saturday and was intrigued enough with the synopsis to buy it. The first half of The Abandoned crawled to the point that I stopped playing the movie about halfway through.

One of the problems was my mild dislike for the character, Marie Jones (played by Anastasia Hille), who flies to Russia to search for her birth parents. I didn’t understand her bitterness and mistrust toward people until I watched the rest of the movie tonight. Then, I only got a glimmer of her backstory.

She discovers that both of her parents are deceased and that she has inherited their house in a remote part of the wilderness. For the first half of the movie, expect to watch her stumbling around one of the creepiest houses ever shown on film. Director Nacho Cerda did a great job with this, as well as the Russian wilderness backdrop.

The action got somewhat better when her alleged twin brother, Nicolae, appeared on the scene and helps her fight off the dopplegangers that keep following them around. What their purpose was, I didn’t find out until the very end. Why the murders took place wasn’t revealed, only that it did take place and the ghost of their father wanted them back.

This movie was heavy on creepy effects and weak on plot. While it was refreshing to see a 40-something protagonist, I didn’t like the character, although I felt sorry for her when she learned the truth about her family. Because of this, I wouldn’t recommend buying the movie. Rent it instead, if only to see the house.

Oren Peli made his supernatural thriller, Paranormal Activity, with no budget, no time and a crew of three. The 99-minute film became a standout feature at this year’s Screamfest, lauded by horror veterans, such as Andrew Kasch of Dread Central.

A young couple suspects that their house is haunted by a malevolent entity so they set up video surveillance to capture evidence of what happens at night as they sleep. Their surveillance and home videos have been edited into the 99 minute feature film “Paranormal Activity.

DreamWorks has since made a deal with Peli to remake his original film, which will be included with the remake when it comes out on DVD, after the theatrical release. As of this date, there is no planned schedule or script. But you can get a taste of what the film is about by watching the trailer below. Based on that, I found Paranormal Activity very reminiscent of The Blair Witch Project.

Paranormal Activity Trailer

This is a two-part review, as I read both the book and watched the movie this week. I’ll start off with the book. The story is narrated by Robert Neville, who starts off by telling us how he avoids the vampires that try to break into his house every night. As the story unfolds, we learn more about how this situation came about and how he is the only survivor of this cataclysmic event. What I found interesting was how Neville became immune to the vampirus germ.

Matheson wrote this book so well that I almost felt as though I was there with Neville as he drinks himself into a stupor each day in order to deal with the pain of his losses and the utter isolation he feels because he is the only human being left alive on the planet. Although there are several horrific moments in the story, I felt that I Am Legend was more poignant and literary. The reader is taken on a tour of this man’s psyche as he tries to understand what happened and if he can “cure” the vampires.

Because I Am Legend is a novella, the publisher decided to tack on several short stories, which I thought were completely unrelated to the main theme of the book. For instance, there was a short story about a woman who was attacked by a rare “hunter” doll. It didn’t matter to me that these stories were well-written; I was expecting a continuation of the main story, or, at the very least, a vampire theme. I returned the book to my bookcase, content that I had read what I had set out to read. Despite that quibble, I highly recommend this book because it not only makes you feel, but it makes you think.

The Movie

Hollywood almost always hacks up the author’s stories to suit their audience. That’s a given. What they did with I Am Legend was modernize it. The story begins with an interview with a doctor who discovers the cure for cancer in 2012. This “cure” proves deadly to the human race. Robert Neville relives the night he lost his family as he washes his dog, when his stop watch goes off to alert him to board up his house, etc. In the book, he was a plant worker who teaches himself how to use a microscope and to distinguish the characteristics of germs and viruses. In the movie, he is a military colonel who is also a scientist. During the three years of the aftermath, he tries to develop a cure for this condition so he can revive the human race from near extinction.

Will Smith performed excellently in his role as Robert Neville. One particular scene that almost made me cry was when he was standing in a movie store, trying to hold a conversation with mannequins. This scene accomplished the sense of total isolation very well. There’s plenty of action in this movie, as Neville is constantly having to watch out for the rabid vampires, who reminded me of the caricature of Pink Floyd’s The Wall–huge, gaping mouths with beady little eyes. To say any more would risk spoiling the movie. If you haven’t seen this movie yet, go see it.

Michael J. Fox has always been one of my favorite actors. So when this movie came out on VHS 10 years ago, I bought it without bothering to read the reviews. The Frighteners involves a shady psychic detective named Frank Bannister, who uses his ability to communicate with the dead to boost his business. I found myself laughing out loud in the beginning when Bannister rigs the house of a man named Ray he’d had an altercation with earlier that day. After the furniture and the dishes settle down, Ray’s wife Lucy “mysteriously” finds Bannister’s business card and calls him over to “exorcise” the house.

Then the movie takes a serious turn when Bannister realizes that Ray has become the latest victim of a string of mysterious deaths. Several people in high places suspect Bannister of killing these people by inducing a heart attack, including a crazed FBI agent, for financial gain. Bannister knows that a malevolent spirit is targeting people because he’s seen the glowing number emblazoned on their foreheads shortly before the spirit comes for them. The stakes are raised when Lucy becomes the next target.

For an independent film, I thought The Frighteners was very good. The graphics and special effects were cheesy, but they made up for it by creating a great plot. The DVD version contains an introduction by the director, who talked about the challenges of making a low budget film. If you like a blend of horror, supernatural, and a twist of humor, watch this movie.