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Released by: Warner Brothers
Released on: October 19, 2004
Director: Stefan Avalos
Cast:Jay Brown, Christine Charters
Year: 2003
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The Movie:
A young couple named Rachel and Kevin move into a quaint California hilltop neighborhood called Edendale to settle in and write the 'great American screenplay.' They soon realize, after meeting some of the local neighbors, all of who are 'in the biz' so to speak, that things are a little strange in their new digs. This strangeness soon overtakes Kevin who becomes obsessed with fitting into the new clique and selling his screenplay, a throw back to the old western films that were made in and around the area they now live in.
Shot completely on digital video and edited using consumer level Apple computers, The Ghosts Of Edendale is an interesting movie even if it isn't completely successful in all regards. While there are one or two really effective jump scares and a couple of moments where we first start to realize how the ghosts are manifesting that did manage to get under my skin, the problem with the film lies in its predictability. Kevin's transition from loving husband to possessed weirdo happens pretty early on in the film and as such eliminates a lot of the suspense. It's hard to worry about what's going to happen to him when it's made painfully obvious by the time you hit the thirty-minute mark on your timer.
Rachel is a much more sympathetic character though (and plenty fun to look at), and it's easy to let the film convince you of her plight. When she returns from her one last modeling shoot to commit herself to writing fulltime and finds that her husband has changed and not necessarily for the better, you can feel for her. Her innate ability to see and feel the spirits in the area causes her to doubt her own sanity - couple that with the stress of her evolving marital strife and things don't look so good for our heroin.
From a technical standpoint, The Ghosts Of Edendale is a mixed bag. It is well directed and some of the cinematography is interesting and effectively sets up a feeling of inevitability but some of the digital effects just don't look right. When the spectral figures appear in the wood of the couple's fence or in the backgrounds of various scenes, there are a couple of times where these ghostly apparitions look very obviously computer generated, which effectively renders them null and void. Thankfully not all of the effects come out this way, but enough of them do that it does warrant mentioning.
Video/Audio/Extras:
This 1.66.1 transfer is not enhanced for anamorphic viewing and has a tendency to look very noisy and compressed pretty much anytime that the lights go off (which is a good chunk of the movie). The majority of this is because the film was shot on digital video but part of this is definitely the transfer judging by the bit rate, which jumps around a fair amount. Daytime or scenes with enough light in them fare okay but the dark scenes are rather ugly and too dark at times to really be able to see what is going on.
The Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound mix isn't bad at all. Dialogue is pretty consistently clear except in a few scenes where you can notice some echo. For some reason, the levels on the sound effects are much higher than those of the dialogue in the film. I'm not sure if this is on purpose or not - if it isn't then the filmmakers did succeed in inadvertently getting me to jump a few times, even when maybe I wasn't supposed to.
First up are three 'making of' featurettes. The first one is a general production featurette explaining what went into making the movie, and the second one is a segment on the computer generated special effects used so prominently throughout the movie to add ambience and atmosphere where there otherwise may not have been. The third featurette is unique in that it features the script overtop some raw footage which the director does a voice over on top of and explains quite effectively how the scene was generated from script to final version.
Two commentary tracks can be found on the disc - the first one is from director Stefan Avalos and producer/girlfriend Marianne Conner, and the second one is a music only track with the film's composer, Vincent Gillioz. The first track isn't bad - it's interesting to hear the director and producer of the film explain how a few aspects were based on their own real life experiences - and it keeps going at a good pace with a lot of interesting information crammed into it. As seems to be the norm with low budget films, there is a lot of discussion relating to how they pulled off what they did without a lot of money, which does make for an interesting listen. The music track, while informative, suffers from way too much dead air time where he doesn't seem to have anything much to talk about. I suppose it makes sense that a director/producer team who had such a personal involvement in their work would have more to say about the movie than the composer would, but this track could have been edited down and flowed much more intuitively than it does here.
There are also seven deleted scenes that you can watch individually or with a play all feature and with or without optional director's commentary. Most were removed for reasons of length but a couple of them are interesting and one of them might have been better served left in the final version as it explains a little bit more about the events in the film.
Finally, some production sketches are included in slideshow format, and the film's original theatrical trailer is also to be found.
The Final Word:
The Ghosts Of Edendale is a good try. It's not a bad story line and keeping in mind what kind of equipment and what kind of budget that the filmmakers were working on, it sure could have turned out to be a lot worse than it is - that being said, there's certainly some room for improvement here as well. The extras are interesting though and indy buffs might dig this one.