Overrated and overhyped

The acting in this movie is really good.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

The biggest problem encountered with this film is the fact that it actually makes no sense at all. If you choose to watch this pathetic excuse for a film you will be subjected to an hour and a half of painful dialogue, pathetic acting and terrible filming and still come out at the end none the wiser than when you began. It is in no way clear why they characters that are murdered are. It's a low budget film so naturally I expect bad shooting and poor acting. However, it costs nothing to think up a story that is actually consistent and makes logical sense.In the initial scene at the 'saloon', which is meant to be 'unchanged since the 1800's', you can clearly see the bar owner leaning on a Fosters lager pump. Not really in keeping with the idea that this bar has not been altered in over two hundred years. Thankfully the director does redeem himself in noticing this mistake and removing the Fosters badge for the next scene! That's about the only congratulations I could offer to whoever thought of, and produced, this atrocity.Life seriously is too short to waste on this film.

I don't watch a horror movie looking for perfection. I look for a decent story that isn't screwed up by the actors or production staff. Unfortunately, pretty much everything that could have been done wrong in this film was.First, lets talk about the group of five documenting hauntings in the abandoned hotel. Only three of the five were actually doing so. The two remaining hangers-on were the stock obnoxious boyfriend and slutty girlfriend - both of whom were so obviously ill-matched with their partners that it trumped all suspension of disbelief. There was simply no way either of the documentarians would have been going out with either of their mates.Second, lets talk about shooting day for night. This is when a film is shot in daylight but manipulated to make it appear that the scenes were shot at night. At the very darkest it appears that the events in this movie occurred at around dusk. During other interior shots throughout the film it was clearly daylight outside because - duh - you could see the daylight through the windows. I don't believe a single exterior shot was actually filmed at night, and sometimes within the same scene the lighting would change from more red to more blue. The characters also inexplicably kept returning to what seems to be the basement of the hotel, which not only seemed to be a bit more haunted than the rest of the place, but also generally had daylight streaming down into it.Third, how about doing at least a LITTLE research for minor points? This Nevada hotel was, to paraphrase, "one of the grandest hotels between Chicago and San Francisco. Now it sits abandoned off I-95." Can anyone tell me what is wrong with that sentence? Exactly! I-95 runs north-south from Maine to Florida. Would it really have taken more than 20 seconds to find a genuine interstate or state highway along which to place this hotel? Fourth, the ending is never explained and the viewer is left not really knowing why it ended as it did. I know this is often a device used by inferior film-makers to deflect criticism by reflecting it back to how stupid the viewer must be to not understand the film. Viewers too often fall into this trap, and sometimes with good reason. In this case, however, the nonsensical ending is yet another symptom of a horrible movie - not the viewer's inability to follow a story.Even when looking for a low-budget horror flick to pass an October evening, avoid this one.

Five college students - sensitive Julie (Marnette Patterson, the sole decent actress in the film), nice guy Chad (Kellan Lutz), jerky Mike (Richie Chance), nerdy Dean (Scott Whyte), and bitchy Kerri (Mandy Amano) -- go to Goldfield, Nevada to make a documentary on ghosts. The quintet check out an old rundown hotel that's haunted by the angry and unrestful spirit of Elizabeth (ravishing Ashley Rae), who was murdered by her cuckolded husband George Winfield (Chuck Zito) a long time ago. Director Ed Winfield, working from an extremely talky, hackneyed and uneventful script by Dominic Biondi, lets the pace crawl along at an excruciatingly sluggish rate and fails to develop any much-needed tension or momentum. Moreover, the bulk of the characters are highly irritating and obnoxious chowderheads who elicit zero sympathy from the viewer. One quite simply doesn't give a fig whether these hateful tools live or die. The largely poor acting rates as another significant flaw, with Chance copping the grand booby prize for his profoundly grating portrayal of the grossly unappealing Mike. The lousy dialogue, consisting mostly of the usual profanities, is downright painful to hear at times. The grindingly predictable story doesn't help matters any. Ditto the generic shuddery score, chintzy (less than) special effects, tacky gore (the spurting blood looks like fruit punch), and lackluster cinematography. Roddy Piper is wasted as a gruff and unfriendly local bartender. The key problem with this film is that it's awfully slow and long-winded; the plot takes forever to get going and by the time the narrative finally peps up in the last third you're too numb with boredom to care. Worse yet, there isn't even any gratuitous female nudity to be seen during the token soft-core sex scene. Not even the downbeat ending can redeem this dud. A total wash-out.

The plot of this movie is the basic haunted house scenario. However it suffers from bad direction, a bad script, bad acting and bad special effects. The cast is relatively small and I only recognised two of them, Roddy Piper (They Live) and Marnette Patterson (Kaley Cuoco's sister in Charmed). Marnette can act and in my opinion is the only person in the movie who can. I would go into more detail but i wasted enough time watching the movie itself so I'm not going to waste any more. This should be a 1 star rating but unfortunately and unbelievably I have seen worse movies than this, therefore I have to save the 1's for them.