Alone in the Ghost House

Lana, a reality TV star, isn’t afraid of anything and she plans to prove it to the world. The best way for her to do this is obviously to shoot a reality show in which she, her husband, and their cameraman spend the night in various haunted houses across the country. Everything is going fine until they end up in the most haunted place in America, The Devil’s Commune. Several people have already died violently within those walls; Lana and her team have to do their best to not be next.

I’m a sucker for a well done found footage movie, especially when it involves ghost hunters getting fucked up by the places that they are investigating. This one ticks those boxes and then some. One thing that I really enjoy about found footage movies is that as long as you have a competent cast and crew and a good story budget doesn’t matter all that much. You can throw all manner of green leafy spendy money at a bad concept with a lame cast and still get crap. Alone in the Ghost House is an example of well done found footage with an interesting story made on a shoestring budget.

The story is pretty well constructed and the characters are all pretty likeable and believable. There is a ton of improv in this movie and that really lends to how natural so much of the dialog feels. The director, Henrique Couto, also plays the cameraman and called for multiple takes on some scenes while the camera was rolling which really added to the feeling of authenticity of the filming process. This movie feels like you are watching a small crew try to shoot some unscripted TV.

The Blu Ray release of Alone in the Ghost House from Alternative Cinema is chock full of special features. There’s a hilarious silent short film, a making-of featurette, and a metric shit ton of trailers for some great campy flicks. I really loved the behind the scenes stuff that explained some of the tactics they used to get some of the reactions and how they made everything feel so authentic. The movie itself is great but the special features make getting the hard copy totally worth it.

All in all, would I recommend this movie? Yeah man. If you’re into found footage I definitely recommend going and grabbing a copy of this flick.