Terry's Reviews
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The Ghosts of Edendale - 2003 Written & Directed by Stefan Avalos Starring |
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| Rachel and Kevin move into Edendale, California a
town that borders Hollywood and was the location of the first silent films from the early
1900s. Kevin is there to write the next great screenplay and get into Hollywood. His wife
Rachel is there to relax as she’s been stressed being known as the Zoom Magazine
girl. Shortly after moving in, Rachel starts to see things that seem to be supernatural and goes to her husband for help. He doesn’t want to hear any of it as he is too engrossed with writing his script and as time passes it seems he is possessed by one of the local ghosts. In this way this film is kind of like THE SHINING. As the film plays, Rachel becomes more frantic by the hauntings and Kevin goes from being irritated by being bothered to downright vicious. We find out the neighborhood is not what it seems and those trying to help Kevin to get into Hollywood are doing nothing of the sort. Though the performances were fairly good and it was competently directed, I felt there was still something missing. THE GHOSTS OF EDENDALE has a nice digital almost film look and the Special Visual Effects by Scott Hale are pretty good. I didn’t particularly like how often you see the ghosts because I felt the ghost image lost it’s power after seeing it a few times. A bit more restraint would have gone a long way at increasing the suspense and believability of the effects. Director Stefan Avalos is known as one of the guys behind THE LAST BROADCAST. I never saw that film but with this film he’s made something that is straightforward and has good intentions. He certainly spends time with developing the characters and does a good job at making them seem real. He has a bit more difficulty creating suspense and terror as I anticipated all the scares and felt they were somewhat repetitive. I guess in this way the film felt a little flat to me. What I was most impressed with was the high level of ambition that Avalos and Producer Marianne Conner have on display and that they are doing it on digital. This is certainly the way of the future and all aspiring filmmakers should salute them. What they were able to get on the screen using basically their home/neighborhood as the location and doing the post-production on a home computer speaks massive volumes of Avalos/Conner’s talent and how far digital world has come.
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