10.10.2012

#205 -- Ghosts of Goldfield (2007)

Rating: 2 / 5
Director: Ed Winfield

Back in the 1930s, a hotel owner became attracted to a servant girl named Elizabeth. He didn't love her, though he claimed that he did. Even after their affair ended, he didn't want her to be with anyone else; he was extremely jealous. When he discovered that her infant child was not his, but instead belonged to the bartender named Jackson (played by WWE hall of famer, Roddy Piper), who Elizabeth truly loved, he became furious. He locked Elizabeth in room 109 of the hotel, tied her up and tortured her. He also killed the small baby and supposedly threw it down a mine shaft. Elizabeth's ghost was said to haunt the hotel, forced to relive her murder; she was also supposed to roam the halls crying, "where is my baby?" She was only guilty of falling in love, and having a child with the man she loved. She lied because (I'm assuming) she knew the man would react badly. She knew that her life, and the life of her child, might be at stake if he knew the truth. And she was absolutely right. Why she was punished be reliving that terrible night, I'm not sure. I believe that, maybe, she was only trapped in this dimension because she so badly wanted to find her child.

A group of documentary film-makers travel to the Goldfield Hotel, hoping to capture footage of Elizabeth. Things do not go according to plan, naturally, or else there wouldn't be  much of a horror movie here. Unfortunately, there wasn't very much of a horror movie anyway.

There wasn't a whole lot of action here. It was mostly the group walking around the hotel with one of those ghost scanners and filming absolutely  nothing. There were some noises, and some of them saw flashes of Elizabeth, but nothing to elicit fear in the viewer. All Elizabeth did was talk to them menacingly, or at least I assume it was supposed to seem menacing. She didn't look like a ghost, either. She looked like a girl in a bad Halloween costume. Her ghostly form completely contradicted what her story told us. She was supposed to be a sweet girl who got caught up in a dangerous love triangle. But her ghost was a whore. She even seduced on of the crew members through another girl's body. She tried to seduce him again, but by that time, he'd already figured it out. His response was "I don't fuck dead chicks. Go look for your dead baby or some shit." Elizabeth didn't like that very much, and it resulted in having his throat torn out by her long, black, plastic fake Halloween fingernails. It could have been gruesome, if they'd let us see it. It was shrouded in shadows, and all I could see was some fake blood spewing around.

When the rest of the crew noticed that two of them had been killed, they started getting worried. Julie, the leader of the group, had visions about Elizabeth and her two gentlemen callers. She wore a necklace that was connected to Elizabeth. It belonged to Elizabeth, and the girl who ratted her out stole it. That girl happened to be Julie's grandmother. So Julie figured that Elizabeth just wanted her necklace back. From the moment that I heard of Elizabeth's story, I was sure of where this movie would go. Since she roamed the halls of the hotel crying, "where's my baby?" I was sure that they'd have to find the baby's bones and return them to its mother, in order for her to cross over. But no. All she wanted was her necklace back.

There were two things this movie had going for it. The first is Roddy Piper. His performance wasn't great, but I think having his name plastered on the cover brings a couple of viewers. Second is Kellan Lutz (from Twilight). That one should attract a bunch of girls at least. But that's it. Though Elizabeth's story is interesting, the rest of the movie just failed to keep my interest. The characters were dull and pissed me off. The ghost was lame and unconvincing. The two murder scenes were too obviously fake, and the whole thing was entirely pointless.

All ghost stories have at least something in common. A lot of them are essentially the same thing with different characters. But if they're well done, none of that matters. We can overlook it. But when a ghost story is bad, it's really bad. This is one of those movies. It was originally supposed to be a part of the Urban Legends series, though I'm not really sure why. Though the Urban Legend movies aren't the best by any means, but this really isn't the same caliber as those. And this really doesn't feel like an urban legend to me. It just seems like a crappy ghost story. 

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