American Poltergeist: A Bizarre Movie That Forgets to be a Movie

I found this as a Netflix suggested film and it seemed horrible enough to compete with the Ouija Experiment 2 and they’re made by the same company. You know what they say don’t judge a book by its cover and don’t judge it by this cover as it was obviously made by a graphic design company that actually knows how to do its job. This movie is not the worst movie ever but it certainly is strange.  I actually have to compliment this movie in some aspects one being the cinematography. I think the cinematographer has his moments, the lighting design and framing is overall good it’s nothing great but it’s passable. The set of the house is interesting, some visual antiques add a certain aesthetic and the pool and driveway areas are nice looking. This contrasts the Ritz theater in Ouija Experiment in the made it look like crap, it was dull boring and uninteresting. The movie is edited in into four different days in which the first day foreshadows and establish characters as things get progressively worst going forward with shit hitting the fan in the final day.

Know to address the problems with the movie and it all revolves a round this key point, the movie forgets to be a movie. The reason I’m condensing this into a short review instead of the longer one is that to describe the plot is simple terms, NOTHING HAPPENS. The film is extremely short because the filmmakers have no idea how to write or pace a film.  Character development: there is none. We get one line were Taryn, the main character admits to her brother that she doesn’t like his girlfriend. Do they use this to have conflict between the group and we get everyone’s thoughts on it? No. Is it to get us, the audience to feel animosity towards her character as well? No. We actually, don’t know any of the characters.

The movie doesn’t know how to be a horror movie?

This movie isn’t scary, it doesn’t even try to be scary. Ouija Experiment 2 was a better horror movie in that it knew how to use the camera hiding the background behind a characters shoulder making us anxious on what might lurk behind. The ghost insist scary and I don’t remember there being a jump scare the ghost just sort of appears.  The connection to the Lizzie Borden trial is unnecessary, lame, and irrelevant. The movie was kind of a slasher film but there’s no carnage and the majority of the deaths happen of screen. The sound editor is horrible. There’s cartoonish and cheap sound effects and music throughout that just detract in a way that I think the film would have been better with no sound. The acting is horrendous enough, nothing against any actors in this film but it was awful, so the film probably would have been better if it was a silent film.  The movie introduces a lot of characters at the very end because they need more people to kill but we don’t care about the characters you haven’t written a reason to care about at this point that introducing more characters just to die is just poorly done. I think there are some scenes that so poorly executed you might get a laugh at it.

Overall this movie is just bad but it doesn’t do anything that deserves a review that crucifies it. It’s more forgettable than bad and it actually does some things decently that just gets outshine by how incompetent it is as a whole. I was holding out that maybe this film would have a similar epic ending that Ouija Experiment 2 had and no, nothing happens the entire movie. (SPOILERS AHEAD) Everyone dies and Taryn has red contacts which proves she is now home. One thing that seems to hold a lot of bad movies is how does your character interact with the events and change or affirm him or herself from beginning to end. Taryn is looking to find a place she can call home, because of demonic possession she finds it. That’s not satisfying. Insidious is a horror movie with a successful non-happy ending where a demonic entity wins and its not uncommon in horror films as the twist is that the slasher doesn’t die but in these stories, the good examples at least the characters have a moment of victory were there character finds closure and complete their arcs when the plot turns on them with the evil still lurking. Even Ouija understood this, it didn’t understand the character that survives should at least exist in the first half of the movie but it knew how to structure a horror movie. People are quick to give this a one star review and I don’t want to defend it. It’s a film that despite competence in a couple areas,  still fails to recognize that the fault i its storytelling in what must of been a brief pre-planning stage. It’s just not that good and I hope you never come across it whether your a legit horror movie buff or someone looking to laugh at something ironical it’s not worth your attention.