Name: Ghostkeepers
Genre: Horror
Duration: 1 h 25 min
Rating: 2.1
Cast: Jenny Costanzo, Heidi L. Dennis, Gene Lee

Amateurish, but not completely without merit

I saw Ghostkeepers pop up on Hoopla and remembered the director/co-writer/star, Anthony D.P. Mann, from the long-running but now sadly defunct Horror Etc podcast. I turned it on in the background while doing other things, and I think that's probably the best way to watch it. The premise is that a veteran horror actor and his leading lady reunite to record a podcast in a haunted house where they previously filmed a horror movie called "The House Where Evil Was Born" (I think that's the title). In addition to them, the main cast includes the podcast host and producer and a medium brought in to authenticate the supernatural activity in the dwelling.

So, for the unkind criticisms: this movie is pretty amateurish. It's shot on DV and boy does it look like it. The flat, yellow lighting doesn't help, nor do the fairly straightforward shot compositions. The editing is too noticeable; the cuts seem arbitrary and are sometimes jarring rather than fluid and invisible. And the sound...yikes. One of my old film school professors used to say that the quickest way to convince an audience they are watching a low-budget movie is to have bad sound. In some scenes you struggle to hear the actors because the ambient noise all but drowns them out. It makes me wonder if they just used the microphone on the camera. I didn't notice the music, which means it mustn't have been awful.

The acting is...okay. It's hard to judge because the poor sound and sometimes wooden script doesn't do them any favors. I thought Jenny Costanzo as Amber the medium was probably the most watchable. Mann isn't bad--he refrains from being too over-the-top, but I think he might be miscast as horror legend Victor Brimstone. He just doesn't command the authority and gravitas of the true icons of the genre like Vincent Price or Boris Karloff.

Anyway. I'm reluctant to be too hard on the movie because it does represent an endearing enthusiasm for the drama. Everybody involved was really trying, I think. Sometimes with these ultra-low-budget affairs you get the feeling they were just made as a cynical cash-in, or else you feel like you are watching the work of a director who is just orchestrating a cheap drive-in flick in order to get a few actresses naked. (I don't mind nudity in films inherently, but I also don't want to feel like I need to shower after watching one.) I was nervous at first because the female characters in the beginning feel like they have "written-by-men" syndrome--they come across as catty or else outright vituperative for no really good reason. But as the film proceeds they become more three-dimensional and human.

In the end I don't know if I would even really classify "Ghostkeepers" as a horror movie. There aren't that many scare sequences and ultimately it seems more interested in the interpersonal relationships of its characters than in supernatural spookiness. Most of the characters have an arc and I found myself becoming invested in them in spite of myself. If Mann improves sufficiently in the technological department, I think he is capable of a satisfyingly professional and watchable film.

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