Ghosts of Darkness

When Ghosts of Darkness started and the low-budget aspects became apparent, I lost all my hope. However, this film wears its low-budget status like a badge of honor and makes the very most of it. Wink-wink performances (though good), occasional well-placed humor, and some genuine scares and you've got a winner.

This is such a good movie. I have it in my watchlist and have seen it at least a doz times. Such a great story and the acting was far better than what I see from huge hollywood stars. Id love to see both actors in more of their movies.

Promising premise for a decent haunted house story is wasted due to an over-the-top melodramatic score and one of the two lead actors, one Michael Koltes, being much too young, mincing, and untalented to pull off the role of a grumpy, jaded, skeptical yet haunted heterosexual widower. The other lead actor is actually enjoyable, but has too much to overcome. Aside from the above, there's not a decent scare to be found.

Following a series of grisly deaths, a pair of spiritualists and ghost hunters are called out to a remote house in the countryside to debunk the rumors of it being haunted, but while they stay they come to believe its tortured history might be true and try to learn why to get out of the house alive. This was quite an enjoyable offering. Among its better features is that this one works best as a straightforward genre effort without much use for the comedy. Given a fully enjoyable and intriguing backstory involving the spate of gruesome murders that have taken place inside the house this early build-up about the house has quite a lot to enjoy as these create an interesting setup to their story. There's also quite a lot to like with the fun clash of styles presented by their differing methods. While the obviousness of the carefree, spontaneous intuitive and the cold, clinical researcher armed with high-tech gadgets hits close to home, the film makes great use of these different tactics throughout here. From setting highly ingenious traps to using instinct and rational thought to look at the incidents, there's some fun to this one as they come to appreciate and appropriate each other to solve the case. The last positive here is the genuinely enjoyable and oftentimes chilling encounters. Not just featuring traditional pop-up jump scares, there's some fun to be had with the tormenting games they play on the two or the illusions of figures running around the house which aren't there. The big encounters here, the basement chase and the series of brawls with the various demons and ghosts attempting to prevent their mission, offers a ton of likable action and stalking which works nicely overall to have a lot to like. This one doesn't have much in the way of flaws. About the only real issue here is the seemingly unnecessary attempts at comedy this tries to pass off here. As the beginning is based around their obvious mistrust of each other and their differing viewpoints, it becomes tedious to go through that, especially when the comedy goes against the seriousness on display. As well, the finale is a bit overdone with the use of too much CGI to get the point across and looks goofy, but otherwise, this one isn't that bad. Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.

On a lazy Saturday night, I came across a film that piqued my interest, "Ghosts of Darkness". The premise starts off simple enough, a ghost hunter and a medium are invited to a house to prove that it isn't haunted. Each are offered $50,000.00 USD to spend three days within the house and at the end declare the house is safe from any sort of paranormal activity. The two investigators are at odds almost immediately upon meeting one another. One a staunch skeptic, the other a whimsy medium. As they spend the days (and nights) in the house, it becomes very clear everything isn't as it once appeared to be. You can tell this is a budget b-horror film from the get go, but that isn't always a bad thing. The cinematography is of average quality, the special effects aren't terrible and the two actors are actually really good. This film has a lot of comedy in it and when I first started watching it, it almost had a "Beetlejuice" vibe to it. Further (and this is my favorite part), the writers took time to explain almost every aspect of the film, from character's back stories, to the house's history, why it was haunted and wrapped it all up in a decent little package. I'll be blunt, this will NOT be the best horror/comedy you'll ever see. But it won't be the worst either. It's worth giving it a go if you need to get your horror fix on.

I wasnt expecting much from this but it was surprisingly good for a low budget movie. Firstly it isnt a horror its a horror comedy. I have always loved Ardgour house where it was filmed and my favourite Scottish Ghost Story movie LORD OF TEARS was also filmed there - If you havent seen it then do so; its a uniquely Scottish chilling ghost story harkening back to the days of Agatha Christie and reminiscent of a James Herbert novel like Ghosts Of Sleath. I dunno whether it was because this film was also filmed at the same location but it also had that old style feel to it which added to my enjoyment. I thought the two main characters performed well although Paul Flannery stole the show for me , his acting was excellent and he was one of those guys who are naturally funny and looked more like Johnny Depp than Johnny Depp does himself these days. This was quite an interesting film with gore akin to higher budget movies; a cross between the Evil Dead and House On Haunted Hill with laughs. Very different and quite funny - It wont split your sides with laughter and it wont scare the pants off you but it will make you smile and the Scottish setting was as always very impressive - The location itself is always up for rental so if you fancy a spooky Scottish getaway I can highly recommend Ardgour house - take this along with you and watch it in the house as we did with both movies and you might just meet the real ghosts!

Not sure if it was the acting or the script. The cocky investigator is just bad. There was nothing believable about this actor. I've seen better horror from homemade YouTube videos. This is definitely in the bottom 10 horror movies I've seen. I gave it a three because the house they're in is beautiful and it takes place in Scotland. That's it's only saving grace if that says anything.

When I say "Ignore the reviews", I am, of course, referring to the positive reviews! I watched this because some a-hole had said that it was one of the best haunted house movies he had ever seen. Well, he can't have seen many. This was dire. The acting was awful and the special effects weren't special. I have seen better on a Wednesday afternoon on the SyFy Channel, and we all know how bad they can be. I never thought I would ever say that a movie, which was only 82 minutes running time, was too long, but this was. It was that boring. Never again will I ever base my evenings viewing on an Imdb user review, just as I don't expect any of you to base your viewing on this review. You all have free will to make up your own minds, but don't say I didn't warn you.

Like in an unpleasant pantomime the minimal cast overact and gurn at the audience. Absolute tosh. Not even worth a longer review as there's nothing more to be said than a complete waste of time, both of my time watching it and the makers' time shooting it.

This film, although advertised as a horror is actually a black comedy. It had all the hallmarks of a great black comedy - funny one liners, brilliant lead character (Paul flannery) and constant storytelling action. The one thing that brought it down to 7 stars was the god awful demon and ghost makeup. It's as if they hired a bunch of teenagers to do some holiday face painting. Maybe that was the look they were going for though?.... great watch when you just want to chill out.