Ghostquake

source: Ghostquake

The story for this movie is hardly going to win any awards and it sets the scene for mediocrity which really underpins this movie. Danny Trejo could have phoned it in for a movie like this but didnt he really put the effort in, unfortunately he was the only good part of the acting in this movie. Most of the acting was pretty meh and the headmaster and female teacher he goes around with are pretty awful, and whats worse get a good amount of screentime each. The effects were certainly done on a budget but at the end of the day this is a horror movie which fundamentally doesnt scare you. It has a few 'jumps' which of course all the worst horror movies confuse with scary and thats it really. Its nowhere near the worst I have ever seen and for a lazy afternoon viewing it could be worse but I wouldnt suggest it was a movie worth seeking out.

This is a not very well developed SyFy film with Danny Trejo as a good guy. A coin dropped in the boiler room of a high school opens a portal to another dimension bringing forth the mass murdering grandfather of one of the students. The killer and his demoness sidekick are not well developed either. He recites corny lines as a Freddie imitator, although not nearly as cool. This is a PG-13 slasher film for the kids. Adults will be bored. Parental Guide: No f-bombs, sex or nudity. Use of "b" word. Girls in school uniforms, but D.E.B.S. is better for that.

Okay I can see why this movie got such poor overall ratings. It is pretty hokie but it is entertaining enough. Danny Trejo is in this one as the janitor protector for the cursed school. He ain't bad. It all starts when an obsessed teacher keeps a coin that has fallen out of a students hand. This brings the bad guys back and the mayhem starts. Students and teachers get killed right and left when the original headmaster and his demon bitch are let loose. As part of the final showdown Trejo is killed by the grandson who has been possessed by granddad the headmaster. Destroying one ring the demonic female (?) is destroyed. But as with most movies the good guys win in the end. The grandson is un-possessed, Trejo appears out of the spirit world and takes grandpa down, and the gold demon coins are destroyed so it can never happen again.

High school senior Jonathan Baron (as Quentin Smith) agrees to help a history teacher in the boiler room. They drop some mystical gold coins Mr. Baron inherited from his grandfather, which causes the old man's spirit to appear. Ghostly grandfather M.C. Gainey (as Lionel Danforth) causes earthquakes in the New England private school. Baron's girlfriend Lauren Pennington (as Whitney Douglas) starts seeing things. People get slaughtered - in very violent ways. Wizened janitor Danny Trejo (as Ortiz) joins the students in battling Mr. Gainey... In featured roles, thin Marc Donato (as Colt) and thick Shawn Phillips (as Blake) overextend their years in high school. Sexy librarian Charisma Carpenter is seen briefly. The opening credit sequence is a highlight, but the accompanying song - a re-write of Chuck Berry's "No Particular Place to Go" - could stir the rock 'n' roll star's once protective lawyers into action. The special effects aren't too bad, for this sort of thing. However, the TV Movie earns a failing grade as director Jeffery Scott Lando and his crew can't turn the effects into an engaging story. *** Haunted High (8/25/12) Jeffery Scott Lando ~ Jonathan Baron, Lauren Pennington, M.C. Gainey, Danny Trejo

Oh dear where do I begin with this one? I watched this under the other title of "Ghostquake". Really that in itself should have been enough to forewarn me of impending stupidity. Sometime back in the 1950's some snooty New England school was the scene of some gruesome murders and occult practices. One student, an ancestor, possesses some demonic gold coins and on showing these to a teacher in a boiler room, they fall from his hands. He picks up all but one of the coins and this is enough to awaken the spirits of the old headmaster and his assistant. Once they're out they wreak havoc around the school one evening trapping several students and teachers within and systematically set about killing them all one by one in inventive ways for what seems to be no real reason except it's in the script. Sounds stupid and it is. This movie was made as a tele-movie and it shows. The special effects look infantile, it's not scary or remotely interesting. I could't even laugh at any part of this and I was bored from beginning to end. No idea why Danny Trejo would want to be involved in this but seeing his name on a cast list these days is getting to be a clear sign of lame viewing ahead. Don't even bother with this tripe.

I normally do not considered the rating given by IMDb visitor about the movie, however, on this particular movie, I should say that the rating was too much on the high side. The rating should be max 1. I was tempted to watch this movie because of Charisma Carpenter was mentioned as on of the star. If you are talking about using somebody's name to sell your movie, this is a very good example. Charisma did appear, although in a total scene of less than 1 minutes. I don't even know why she accepted this part, it is really degrading. When you see a ghost movie, you expect something that is scary, but on this one due to the bad story and strange script, you do not feel the fear. Instead it is a hollow feeling, like if you want a very unromantic love story. One of the ghost action which I can not understand is how it is possible that you have a collapse building on one section of the school and the rest of the building seems okay and of course to follow the title, the ghost will have the incredible power of shaking the building like an earthquake. An of course the usual light that is always flickering when you are entering a room in a ghost story is there. A movie is basically a collection of acts being put together by a director to make sense out of this collection. There is a recipe for each type of movie. But if you do a terrible mixed, then what you will get is a make up story with something supposed to be scary but end up being funny..... I give 1 out of 10, because there is no zero or more for the effort of making something so bad to annoy other people.....

I was expecting so much from this movie, and I was bitterly disappointed. The previews of "Haunted High" show what looks to be a decent haunted school movie, but the opening exposition is weak and the plot gets even more ridiculous as the movie continues. There's barely a plot, only a body count. Once again, someone with a misconception of ghosts and haunted houses creates a movie that carries no logic and absolutely no credibility, but then, this movie was made specifically for SyFy Channel, so the budget could not have been that great. The plot involves a group of students trapped in a haunted school after hours by the ghost of a cruel former teacher who dabbled in Satanism, played by M.C.Gainey, better known as Mr. Friendly from "Lost," who is the most talkative evil ghost I've ever seen in an independent horror movie. As he goes through killing students, joined by a wild-haired succubus who crawls the walls, he spouts weak puns like a poor man's Freddy Krueger. The so-called haunting activity is ridiculous (the Biology frogs return to life), and I don't care how cursed a school is, ghosts cannot alter reality. (One student goes out the window to realize he's still trapped in the school.) What starts as a ghost movie turns into a splatter and gore flick. At one time or another, someone is always asking, "What's going on?" before predictably wandering off and getting knocked off as uncreative as possible. Charisma Carpenter also allegedly stars in this movie, but her character is killed as fast as she appears in one of the shortest movie appearances by a major actress for a character ever. Danny Trejo pulls a strong performance as the janitor with the knowledge of the school's past to save the students. Bottom line: what starts as a neat premise never goes anywhere. SyFy needs to stop producing tripe like this and go back to airing the classics, or at least hire filmmakers with some writing talent. The only neat thing about this movie is a reference to "Sinister Sites," the fictional paranormal TV series from "House Of Bones" which actually did star Charisma Carpenter so apparently these films might share the same writers. Bottom line: "Haunted High" is barely worth watching as a waste of your time, but if you really want to get scared, rent "The Others" or "The Haunting."

Generally I hate SyFy movies with a passion. Haunted High is thankfully not one of their worst, the zombie frog sequence is fun if all too brief, Shawn C.Phillips and Lauren Pennington are likable and while Danny Trejo deserved much better he does what he can. On the other hand, a lot of the film was lame. The rest of the acting is bland, but there is no wonder when their material was as under-par as it was. I had a feeling that the characters would be stereotypes as they always are when it comes to SyFy, I wasn't necessarily put off by that. It was that few of them were memorable or had any spark to them. They were further disadvantaged by some embarrassingly stilted dialogue that never rings true and by a story that manages to be both predictable and dull with no chills or suspense and the attacks and ending were too contrived to be believable. The music is also repetitive, while Haunted High is also very cheap to look at with very choppy editing and while the effects have been worse before in SyFy movies they are substandard here at best. So in conclusion, a lame movie but at the same time it could've been much worse. 4/10 Bethany Cox

The demonic ghost of a long-dead school headmaster, along with his equally dead, but considerably more attractive, wife haunt a high school after a teacher dares to steal a gold coin owned by the ghost's grandson. Starring Danny Trejo as the janitor seeking his dead love,Justified's MC Gainey as the pun-afflicted demon, and the prolific Shawn C. Phillips as the token fat kid. As to offer a counterpoint to the other reviews, I didn't find this to be a bad SyFy film, much less 'the worst' and actually found it no be a nice change of pace to the recent crop of 'nature run amok' offerings that they've been airing as of late. The acting is all right for a film of its ilk and the film was a bit of fun, although granted, the groan worthy puns by the ghost are pretty bad.