A title card at the beginning tells us, “On April 12,
1950, a young inmate was beaten to death in a California boys’ prison…The
murder was never solved…or even reported.” Then a second title card adds, “…sometimes
he comes back, for revenge.” I personally would have left off the “for
revenge” bit, because it comes across as silly. Just “…sometimes he
comes back” is creepier. The film opens with a series of black and white
photographs to give a sense of history and reality of the place, before moving
into the present, where a police officer looks through a vehicle. He radios in
that he’s located the missing vehicle, and as the camera pulls back to a wonderful
wide shot of the area we hear him say there is no sign of the missing girl. The
camera continues to pull back farther and farther, showing us more of the area.
It’s a nice opening.
Two days earlier, Liz (Mackenzie Firgens) is lamenting
the demise of her latest relationship, when her friend Ashley (Heather
Tocquigny) calls to tell her that her previous boyfriend is looking good and is
going to meet them at the river the next day. As they drive to the river, we
recognize the vehicle as the one the cop finds, so we know at least one of
these two girls is in trouble.
Unfortunately, Liz has a video camera, which means we
have to deal with some video footage of the events throughout the film. In
fact, when Danny (Jake White) shows up at the river, Liz films him, asking if
he has a girlfriend and so on. She seems a bit old for that sort of thing, but
whatever (I know she’s supposed to be in college, but she appears to be in her
thirties). The three get in Danny’s vehicle and drive to Preston Castle. On the
way, they talk about the place, as a way to set up that it’s haunted. “Hey,
when was the last death that happened there anyway?” one of the girls asks
Danny. Danny has all the stories about the place, and tells the girls about two
teenagers who sneaked in (and yes, we get a bit of a flashback). He says: “They
found her blood-soaked body. It looked like it had been violently thrown up
against a wall or something. They never really did figure out what happened.”
Oh boy. So one of the girls says she doesn’t think they should go in there
because “something bad might happen.” Yeah, it’s terrible dialogue.
Liz is clearly over her recent breakup, because she
begins flirting with Danny and then kissing him. Ashley gives them some privacy
by going off by herself. The shots where she wanders through the building alone
are sufficiently creepy and tense. I like that the sequence is allowed to go on
long enough to really build some tension.
I’m not a big fan of the device of a character having a
video camera, but this film does put it to some good effect at certain moments.
For example, early on, when Liz is filming the interior of Preston Castle, we
hear Danny and Ashley talking, and their voices get quieter as Liz obviously is
moving away from them. It’s a nice way of establishing the separation of
characters at that point. But I could really do without the blinking red light
constantly reminding us we’re looking through a video camera. It removes us
from what’s happening. This is not a found footage film, so this video stuff
isn’t constant, but it used a bit too much, not just by Liz with her camera,
but by Ashley with her phone.
Ashley has some trouble finding her way back downstairs,
and for some reason keeps filming herself with her phone, saying, “I just
want get out of here.” Okay, then quit fucking around on your phone and get
a move on! The film gets a bit irritating at this point. Finally the other two
go looking for Ashley. And the rest of the movie is them wandering around in
the dark, looking for Ashley and arguing.
These are not the world’s greatest actors, but a good
deal of the problem is the script (or perhaps lack of one). The dialogue is so
relentlessly bad and repetitive that it leaves me wondering if a large portion
of it wasn’t improvised.
But it is certainly an excellent location. And there is
some creepy imagery, and there are a few tense moments. I absolutely love the
moment where Liz is crouched by some metal bed frames. It’s really well done
and frightening. But there just aren’t enough scenes like that. This might be
one of those movies where the fun is watching it with some friends and laughing
at the ineptitude of the characters.
By the way, on the DVD cover it says “Inspired by true
events.” But at the end of the closing credits it says: “This is a work
of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in the film are fictional.”
So as far as I can discover, the bit that’s apparently true is that a
housekeeper named Anna Corbin was killed there in the 1950s. (In the story of
this film, the boy was killed was the one responsible for murdering the
housekeeper.)
A Haunting At Preston Castle was directed by
Martin Rosenberg, and was released on DVD on October 7, 2014 through Inception
Media Group. The DVD contains the film’s trailer.
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