We Are Still Here (2015)

Load of rubbish!!

Captivating movie !

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Really this move had a lot going for it in the first 15 or so minutes. Lots of time taken into filming the environment, great shots of the house and the surroundings, and great job with the sound design (lots of creepy/groaning adding to the house) really made it feel like a house that would creep you out. But the second the dialogue starts it just slowly starts going down hill. I understand not wanting to reveal too much too soon, keep the audience intrigued and guessing, but when it is so drawn out like this it really gets me bored and uninterested. I hated the acting by their older neighbor (the guy that ends up trying to kill them in the end) and the woman with the deflated lips. Poor casting for half of the people in this movie. The guy that gets possessed does a stellar job though, that was one of the saving graces of the film. The scene where he gets possessed is great. I did think the whole "this house demands a sacrifice!" thing was pretty lame. So, was the house haunted by the evil family, or was there a different evil in the house already? You can't have it both ways, if the Dagmar family was sacrificed to the house then it is the house that has the evil within it, or was the family themselves so evil that after they died they continued to haunt the house? And how do the townspeople know that every 30 years it demands a sacrifice? Theres just too many plot holes that make it seem like the concept and script was rushed through.Also the ending is a bit confusing. Why did the evil Dagmar ghosts not kill the couple? And somehow they end up seeing their son at the end? Is their son working with the evil family? Non of it makes sense but the overall movie wasn't too bad. Its somewhat entertaining but definitely not a movie you want to re watch.

I decided to give this movie a chance after finding it in my local library's DVD collection. Sometimes I find hidden gems this way, but this time that was not the result. It's a somewhat slow moving exercise that feels quite stretched out, despite the running time being just eighty three minutes long. The filmmakers might have fixed that problem had they simply taken the time to answer a lot of questions that come up but are simply not answered. The direction is a little better than the script. You do feel the cold and isolation of the setting, and there is often a mildly creepy feeling. And patient gorehounds will be rewarded with some striking splatter in the movie's last half hour. However, I am at a loss as to why the movie was set in the 1970s. Though the period detail is acceptable, I would have preferred that the filmmakers taken the time and money devoted to recreating decades past to punch up the story instead. While the movie is not aggressively bad, it all the same feels half- hearted and unfinished, so I think most viewers will feel unsatisfied.

"We Are Still Here" is a tedious, disjointed horror movie, notable only for its inability - refusal, almost - to generate any fear or tension. It's one of those movies that feels like you are watching it over someone else's shoulder, or perhaps it's being shown on TV in a department store, and you can only see it through the window.The plot is not entirely hackneyed. Sure, we've seen haunted house things before, and the introduction of characters who are versed in the occult has a discouraging smack of "Paranormal Activity" about it. Where it showed promise was the idea that the house itself demands sacrifice from whoever stays there, and the townsfolk know about it.Cue the obligatory scene where the good guys go out to dinner in a pub where everyone stops talking and eyes them suspiciously. You see, all the interesting twist on the haunted house premise allowed the movie to do was throw in another clichéd scene for the price of one.The climax, when it comes, is just violence for the sake of it, that I guess we are supposed to be shocked by. Is it even possible for movie violence to shock us anymore? This is a world where "torture porn" has been a lucrative genre for well over a decade.Violence as a climax is just a lame cop out, the filmmakers admitting they're incapable of thrills and they know it, so here, have some blood and guts instead.A completely forgettable ending to a forgettable movie.

(SPOILERS)"Haunted house" movies are everywhere: Poltergeist, The Conjuring, Paranormal Activity, Insidious, The Amittyville horror, Sinister (just to name a few above-average ones). They all follow the same formula, some much better than others. We Are Still Here does follow the basic outline of this formula to some extent, but does so with its own spin. I found it particularly refreshing that the main characters were not the typical happy middle-class family reluctantly moving into a new house or group of college kids going on a trip of sex and drugs, but rather an older couple struggling to cope with the death of their son. It starts as a slow burn thriller, building on the creepy atmosphere before jumping into a riotous third act that is borderline Evil Dead-level insanity. I like leaving things to the imagination as much as the next horror-fan, but the appearance of the charred, zombie- like ghosts was creepy and effective. The first reveal (showing the ghost through the reflection of the picture) was a very effective jump- scare. However, one of my major complaints was the unnecessary and annoying use of so-called "jump-scare music". Adding in noises that the characters do not hear, but the audience does, is a cheap way of making the jump-scares louder and "scarier". By doing this, there is no strategic use of visual surprise or peak of quiet tension, but merely a streak of silence followed by a loud bang. Case in point: there is a scene where a portrait in the background falls, accompanied by the infamous, clustered "BOO-CLICK-CLACK-BANG-HISS" sound. It's a shame because many of the jump scares presented in the film had the potential to be effective and frightening, but the jump music makes it come off as cheap and lazy. Another problem I had was the expositional dialogue. The way information is presented was too straight-forward and aimed to plainly elucidate. It's a minor complaint, but I got annoyed every time characters would say things that were clearly forced exposition. We Are Still Here isn't perfect, but it has believable characters, a spooky atmosphere, and a slow, steady buildup followed by a finale that anyone with a love for gory splatter-fests of the 80's will surely appreciate due to the practical effects, homages to classic films (including a very pronounced Nightmare On Elm Street reference), and overall insanity reminiscent of The Evil Dead and Silent Hill. As someone who is, admittedly, not the biggest fan of ghost/paranormal movies, I was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed this.