Death of a Ghost Hunter (D)

How creepy is that? Not very.

I was fooled on Thursday night. Bored, at loose ends, and craving a little ghostly entertainment, I began to comb endlessly through NetFlix's meager selection. My wife, meanwhile, scanned online (probably looking at the listings on Instant Watcher), making suggestions to which I replied, "Seen it," "That one sucked," or "Not interested."

At some point she said, "How about Death of a Ghost Hunter?" I'd seen it listed in the rotation, but the low-star rating had kept me from picking it out. I did a quick look at the movie's Wikipedia page. The critique that stuck out the most was, "It was praised for being genuinely scary, while others criticised (sic) the poor acting." Genuinely scary but poorly acted? Well, I can use some scary. Quality of acting is relative, right?

Wrong. As the movie started, with its amateurish cinematic techniques and its earnest (albeit ham-handed) attempts at acting, I had to laugh. Was this supposed to be a comedy? Did anyone in the cast have any acting experience at all? I've played Dungeons & Dragons with folks who couldn't act, and they were a damn sight better than anyone in Death of a Ghost Hunter's cast.

Patti Tindall (playing the lead role of skeptical ghost hunter Carter Simms) is a lovely woman, and the quality of her acting was probably the best of the bunch. Still, she really only comes off as genuine in a couple of scenes, and those are painfully few and far between. Her co-stars, Mike Marsh (playing Colin Green, a chain-smoking cameraman), Davina Joy (as the writer/reporter Yvette Sandoval), and Lindsay Page (portraying the very religious Mary Young Mortenson), are all kinds of wooden. Davina Joy loosens up a couple of times, but the other two (especially Lindsay Page) don't come off as believable.

The basic plot is that the Masterson family (mom, dad, son, and daughter) were murdered in their home some twenty years ago. The current owner of the house (a relative of the Mastersons) offers Carter Simms $5,000 to stay in the house for three days and investigate its supposed paranormal nature. He insists on including both Colin and Yvette, who are there to help Carter record it all.

After the three arrive at the home, Mary Young Mortenson arrives, presumably invited by the owner. Her goal is to ensure that Carter and the others don't slander the Masterson name, given they were important members of her own church. Mary is strange and difficult to get along with, and it's obvious from the start that something's not quite right about her.

Scares are few and far between. Well, okay... Death of a Ghost Hunter doesn't really have any scares at all, unless you think ghosts talking backwards is scary. The story of the Mastersons slowly unfolds, and a few clues are dropped as the cast investigates the house--a ghost that names herself as Miranda via EVP, who wasn't a member of the Masterson family; some disturbing polaroids; and a strange box-like mask with a crucifix on one side. The clues aren't really explored until the end of the movie, when everything is given away in a long-winded series of poorly-acted flashbacks.

"It says here we're supposed to act scared. Uhhh..."

As the title of the film reveals, Carter Simms ends up dying. I don't consider this a spoiler, but I'll leave it to you, dear reader, to discover the circumstances of how she passes on. There's at least one gaping plot hole concerning Mary Young and how/why she comes to be involved in the investigation. Sure, she says the owner of the house told her to show up, but didn't anyone think to call him up when Carter discovers she was only given three house keys instead of four? Go figure.

Overall, watching this movie was like staring at a ten car fatality on the expressway, only instead of feeling revulsion or horror, you only feel pity. I couldn't help but watch even though my mind was telling me that whatever they had planned for the finale could not possible make up for the tedium I'd experienced. Sometimes we have to bleed for our art, I suppose.

This is another one of those "watch at your own risk" titles. If you've got nothing better to do but hammer nails into your eyes, you're probably better off going to bed early or watching Honey Boo Boo.