Cassadaga (2011)

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

I really didn't like this movie.It started off OK with some promise of an OK movie (never had the potential to be good though). The first irritation was when the deaf woman started to speak. She spoke in a normal fashion, whilst deaf people tend to pronounce everything in a different way, because they can't hear what they say. The story was slow and felt like a cheap "stir of echoes" rip off. At times it was confusing. They failed to get in a suspenseful setting and in the end, they have never explained where the voices the victims heard before they were abducted came from. In the end, when Christian is about to kill the deaf woman, even he hears the voices. WTF... what was the point in putting these voices in, if they first help out this guy and then work against him and then leave us guessing what they were and where they came from.I say, don't waste time on this garbage. You're better off watching Thomas the Tank Engine, that has more suspense and if makes A LOT MORE SENSE.

My kingdom for a half decent horror film! Thinking that I'd cleanse my mind of the initially promising but ultimately abysmal Lovely Molly, I immediately skipped to this one... Only to find it was just the same! A young lad cuts his pecker off in the introduction because he wants to be a girl, and the deaf woman's sister gets herself mown down on the road, and the stage is all set for no-hards-barred gore fun... But NNOOO!!Instead we have to tolerate the cutesy-poo relationship between the hearing impaired lady, one of her sickly-sweet pupils and this schoolgirl's seemingly perfect father, who might as well have Generic Love Interest tattooed on the back of his head. Oh, and his break off of their relationship two-thirds of the way through and his reasons for doing it are utterly nonsensical. Couldn't they pay him enough to stay for the entire film? Same with the uniquely voiced Louise Fletcher, who disappears without a trace too with no explanation. You think we should form a search party?Aside from that, we get sub-standard Sixth Sense style scares, a LOT of running about with no clear motive in mind, and of course the main draw... Girls being abducted and turned into human mannequins. It sounds like fun, and it is... But after a few short interludes of this, its back to the mind numbingly tedious main story, with the hopelessly convoluted antics and CRINGE CRINGE CRINGE dialogue. In fact, it got so painful at times, I wished I was as mutton as the heroine. And if you don't know what I mean, learn to speak Cockney. You Philistine.

Another entry in the After Dark legacy and another one without shock value. The positive thing is the fact that the ghost isn't done with CGI. But again it doesn't has much blood to see and when the ghost appears it is never scary or has any jumpshots. The acting was okay. And you quickly are involved with the characters but what annoyed me the most is the fact that the deaf person talked normal. People who are deaf can't talk like a normal person. The séance where things go wrong is maybe the strongest part. We do fall in some emotional scene's that really doesn't add a thing towards the story. But we don't have only a ghost we also have a killer. All part of the ghost that appeared before her, a woman being killed. So in fact we have a romantic part that takes way too much time in Cassadaga, and that is suddenly stopped towards the end of the flick. We have the mystery of the ghost and a serial killer walking around in Cassadaga. And that's where this flick fails a bit. The combination of those events doesn't work. I'll give it a six due not using CGI for the ghost and here and there some low gore shots.Gore 1/5 Nudity 0,5/5 Effects 3/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5

"Dread", Anthony DiBlasi's first movie is among my favorites, so I was quite thrilled seeing his second movie being ready. I was a little bummed when seeing it basically is a restless ghost story but hats of to the writing. They really made this word by incorporating several Slasher and Giallo influences (pretty obvious from the Italian influenced poster artwork) and writing a stone solid script."Cassadaga" deals with a deaf girl who loses her beloved little sister in a car crash and heads of for an off-time in a psychic community (the title-giving Cassadaga) to clear her head. After a séance gone wrong she is haunted by visions of a ghost-zombie-girl who won't leave her alone before she clears the story of her death. So up to here this is some really worn out story material but the girls deafness is incorporated in a pretty creative way and the lead character works perfect. Also the story of the nice guy falling for he after she gives his daughter painting lessons is kind of different with him being torn between a girl seeing ghosts and having regular breakdowns and fighting to keep custody for his daughter. Now when the killer is introduced it gets pretty messy since "Gepetto" is obsessed with puppets and tries to build human marionettes by severing limbs and reattaching them to the living dolls in a pretty bizarre way.The movie manages to serve you some disturbing imagery, staying close to the basic ghost story and yet throwing you curve balls from the beginning on and mixing things up in a puzzling thriller-type of way that keeps you guessing all the time. With all that "Cassadaga" manages to be a creative and kind of different ghost movie that will also satisfy the gore hounds. The whole movie has a pretty romantic feel with the girls relationships to her sister and the nice guy and I think they went a little heavy on the music which along with some wooden acting was the weakest point in the movie and often came across rather cheesy. But besides these flaws its still a really solid movie and among the few better horror movies of last year.Like in "Dread" DiBlasi manages to tell interesting and different stories with a strong focus on the story telling and right amount of sledgehammer to the head. I'll definitely be looking out for his future movies.