Filmmaker Brad Sykes (Camp Blood, Plaguers) made himself a full-length Hi-8 euro-sleaze flick while on summer vacation in Virginia and it shows. That’s a compliment. Utilizing his free time away from his film studies at Boston University, Sykes gathered up some enthusiastic folks and crafted a complex ghost story at an oceanfront property. Said property has just been inherited by Andrea Graves following the passing of her great grandmother. As we well know, any free property (especially of the dilapidated variety) always comes with a catch and a dark secret or two. Doesn’t help that the place is one of those local legends that the neighborhood kids talk about to scare the crap out of each other. A hitchhiking runaway discards her RC can in the ocean before coming across the empty house and deciding that it’s a solid location in which to have a smoke and talk to herself about her life. She dies before she can even finish her smoke. Andrea arrives at the boarded up crap-shack which the city has officially condemned and comes across a local character who warns her of blood and voices because that’s what local color that kind of resembles a homeless Walton Goggins are want to do. Andrea is unable to get access to the house at first so she goes to stay with an old friend by the name of Vic who claims ownership of a ridiculous head of hair and the social awkwardness befitting of that confusing mane. Vic, in all his weirdo vibes, warns her about the house’s spookiness but Andrea dismisses it. She plans on living there no matter how infamous and creepy it is. That night, Andrea dreams of the house and of what appears to be a candle-lit ritual performed in the unfinished attic that looks exactly as it did in her dream when she finally makes it into the house. Even finding the mirror that was prominently featured. She brings it back to Vic who seems a little captivated by it. That night, the real estate agent Andrea has been working with pays a visit to the place for… well, I guess he shows up so we have another corpse… getting his own flashlight shoved into his chest. Vic expresses his love to Andrea ever so creepily and they begin making out while a reflection in the mirror watches on. Slowly, Andrea comes to learn of her ancestor’s history and a pact that must be completed if she wishes to put an end to the sinister shenanigans going down which may end in only death and madness if she ain’t careful. Neighborhood side streets, windswept beaches, the computer room at a local library and an empty yet somehow crowded restaurant bring the flavor. A ghost with a saber and some fun homemade zombies add the spice. It’s like walking through quicksand in someone else’s dream of a small town haunting they heard about years ago over a drunk uncle’s campfire yarn-spinning or maybe it was an all-night Jean Rollin marathon they witnessed under the influence of heavy sedation. Awkwardly delivered but respectably accomplished, it’s the kind of lo-fi weirdness that I find captivating flaws and all.
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