A HAUNTING AT SILVER FALLS: THE RETURN (2019)

Studio:      Viva Pictures
Director:    Teo Konuralp
Writer:      Jesse Reffsin
Producer:  Richard Tucci
Stars:     Laura Flannery, James Cavlo, Nikita Ramsey, Jade Ramsey, Clemmie Dugdale, Harry Hains, Christopher Crema, Jennifer Dorogi, Dendrie Taylor

Review Score:

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Summary:

A troubled college student must return to her haunted hometown when her murderous aunt comes back from the dead as a ghost.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Dr. Parrish, the ex-wife of the therapist with the same name, examines unstable patient Wendy at her Silver Falls Institute for Occult Study. Wendy claims a nightmarish vision showed her the ghosts of twins Heather and Holly Dahl alongside Jordan, whose murderous aunt Anne Sanders haunts the town as a ghost.

Currently a college student, Jordan’s recurring nightmares of the twins intensify. Jordan’s boyfriend Larry suggests that Jordan consult his mother, Dr. Parrish, to deal with residual trauma from five years earlier. Jordan feels insulted.

Wendy warns night watchman Matt that Anne’s ghost is trying to recruit someone at the institute to act on her behalf. Unstable patient Jack grabs Matt from behind while Anne drains Matt’s lifeforce until he dies.

Larry tells Jordan about the death at the institute. Larry suggests a ghost helped Jack escape his locked room and warns Jack is still loose. Larry asks Jordan to return to Silver Falls with him to convince his mother to leave, but Jordan refuses to go.

Jordan calls Dr. Parrish. Dr. Parrish explains Anne has returned as a ghost and is using Jack just like the twins used Jordan. Aware that Jordan’s visions enable her to see ghosts like her patients can, Dr. Parrish emails security camera footage to Jordan. Jordan verifies Anne appears as a ghost.

Jack abducts Larry at his mother’s home. Jack holds Larry captive in the institute’s basement.

Jordan decides to return to Silver Falls when she learns Larry is missing. Jordan’s dorm roommate Zoe Mendez accompanies Jordan. Dimwitted classmate Trevor Randolph, who has an unreturned crush on Zoe, drives the two girls.

When Jordan, Zoe, and Trevor arrive, Dr. Parrish takes everyone to a remote cabin thinking they will remain hidden from Anne. Dr. Parrish warns that Anne wants to kill Jordan, but she believes they can defeat her together.

Hoping they can convince Sheriff Joseph Hall that Jack is working with a ghost, Dr. Parrish brings Jordan to the police station. The sheriff curtly dismisses the two women’s claims.

Jack later attacks Deputy Brett Carson demanding to know where Jordan is. Anne kills the deputy in a jail cell, although the sheriff still refuses to believe a ghost is involved.

Dr. Parrish, Jordan, Zoe, and Trevor go to the institute to look for a way to stop Anne. Since she is the only one who can see ghosts, Jordan elects to go inside alone.

Jordan finds Larry in the basement and frees him. Jack captures Jordan and Larry. Anne begins draining their lifeforces when Zoe and Trevor enter to rescue Jordan and Larry from Jack.

Dr. Parrish takes everyone back to the cabin so Larry can recuperate. Jordan asks Dr. Parrish about the mental instability of her patients. Dr. Parrish explains that each contact with the occult takes a toll on their minds. Jordan didn’t experience it previously because the twins endowed her ring with protective power. Without the ring, Jordan feels the effects of her mind crossing the ghost barrier on its own.

Dr. Parrish becomes confused when Jordan mentions that Larry saw Anne’s ghost too. The group discovers an immovable ring placed on Larry’s finger, which Anne is using to track their location.

To get Anne off their trail, Dr. Parrish goes home to see if her patient files might reveal Anne’s weakness. Jordan, Larry, Zoe, and Trevor go to a motel.

Jordan, Trevor, and Larry rescue Zoe when Anne attacks her in her motel room’s bathtub. Anne attacks Jordan too, but Larry pulls her away.

Larry calls his mother to tell her about Anne’s attack and to warn her that Jack wasn’t with Anne. Dr. Parrish begins telling Larry what she found in the files when Jack attacks Dr. Parrish in her home, disconnecting the call. Larry calls the sheriff, who arrives at the house to chase Jack away before he can kill the doctor.

After regrouping at Caldwell Hospital where Dr. Parrish lies unconscious, Jordan, Larry, Zoe, and Trevor look over the files at Dr. Parrish’s house. Larry concludes they need the twins to help fight Anne. Jordan warns that Anne changed the twins. Larry advises that they need to change the twins back.

The four friends return to the cabin. While Zoe and Trevor stay behind, Jordan and Larry enter the forest to find the twins. The twins attack Larry. Jordan reminds the ghosts of their true identities by showing them Larry’s ring. One of the ghosts removes the ring. Jordan asks the twins to help them stop Anne.

Jordan and Larry follow the twins back to the institute. Jordan and the twins confront Anne’s ghost, but are overwhelmed in their fight, even though the twins give Anne a ring for power. Larry interrupts to show Jordan cellphone footage of flickering electricity harming Anne during her attack on Zoe.

Jordan and the twins restrain Anne to a shock therapy table. Larry plugs in the system’s cord. A jolt of electricity vaporizes Anne’s ghost.

Anne’s ring falls to the ground. Jordan returns the ring to the twins, who then vanish.

Having abducted them at the cabin, Jack enters holding Zoe and Trevor hostage. Sheriff Hall arrives and shoots Jack dead.

The sheriff tells Larry his mom’s condition improved. Jordan, Larry, Zoe, and Trevor leave to visit Dr. Parrish at the hospital. Jack’s ghost suddenly kills Sheriff Hall.

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Review:

A trivial tidbit about Culture Crypt: Of the 1,300+ feature film reviews published to date, my review of “A Haunting at Silver Falls” from June 2013 (found here) remains one of the top ten most viewed pieces of content. Hits total in the top half of five figures, which is high for DTV indie coverage. I’d like to think that’s because my critique is so entertaining, insightful, or well composed that it can be considered “must read” material in regards to the movie. (It’s not. That review was written when this site was just three months old and it reflects every pound of greenness being carried at the time.)

In actuality, I believe that page is popular because the film’s “inspired by true events” claim prompts people to investigate what those “true events” supposedly are. Probably because I reference those words, Google ranks my review third when someone searches for “haunting at silver falls true story,” so clicks come courtesy of everyone expecting explanations I don’t discuss. (For the record, the “true story” is limited to twins who really were murdered, although everything regarding ghosts, curses, and surprise serial killers in a family tree is of course made up.)

Even though the movie isn’t good, which is phrasing it charitably, “A Haunting at Silver Falls” holds a special place with me for helping attract an audience during Culture Crypt’s infancy. And even though I’ve since moved away from frequenting the vein of VOD vapidity that spawns such hit-and-run fright flicks, my unusual association with the first film made me feel oddly obliged to review its sequel too.

“A Haunting at Silver Falls 2,” as it was once named before substituting its number for new subtitle “The Return,” announced in late 2016 that production would begin that December. By February the following year, stills circulated via press release, confirming principal photography was underway while indicating the film would seek distribution at upcoming film markets.

Incidentally, that same press release claimed “A Haunting at Silver Falls” “gained an extensive online fan base from teenage bloggers,” whatever that means. Seems more likely those “bloggers” were the same people hitting Culture Crypt looking to dig up dirt on the “true story” myth.

Naturally, it’s not a good sign when a small horror movie finishes filming, but doesn’t release until over two years later, which would be June 2019 for “A Haunting at Silver Falls: The Return.” Also not a good sign? Nearly none of the key creators or talent coming back for the follow-up.

“Return” is what director Brett Donowho, the three original writers, and lead actress Alix Elizabeth Glitter don’t do for this sequel. Directing only his second feature and first film since 2002, Teo Konuralp takes over for Donowho. For his first produced screenplay, writer Jesse Reffsin supplies the story. And Laura Flannery assumes the role of central character Jordan from Glitter, who seems to still be in the business, but presumably couldn’t be bothered or wasn’t invited to do another round in this rodeo.

Sisters Nikita and Jade Ramsey return as twins Holly and Heather. Since they’re playing ghosts in heavy makeup shot with music video skip frames, they could be anyone and it wouldn’t matter. That leaves James Cavlo, reprising his role as Jordan’s doting dork boyfriend Larry, as the only meaningful connective tissue to the original.

Because six years passed, and being that the movie wasn’t memorable to begin with, I confess I recalled very little about “A Haunting at Silver Falls.” Thankfully, the recap I wrote in 2013 filled in vague blanks. If the first film isn’t fresh in your head either, I recommend a refresher of some sort. Otherwise, newcomers can get the gist thanks to the story’s generic genesis, although you’ll care even less about who connects with which prior events and so forth.

Add veteran character actor Erick Avari to the list of those sitting out a second trip to Silver Falls. The script sidesteps this inconvenience by basically keeping Avari’s Dr. Parrish character, but recasting him as a woman and explaining the swap as, “this is that Dr. Parrish’s ex-wife.”

I don’t know what she did, but “A Haunting at Silver Falls: The Return” doesn’t regard actress Dendrie Taylor highly as the new doc. Taylor features either first or second in terms of screen time, yet doesn’t receive a title card and has her first name misspelled as “Denrie” in end credits. That probably indicates the film’s overall disregard for detail more than anything.

Jordan and Larry got out of Dodge after the first film and have been away at college ever since. Back home, Nu Dr. Parrish runs the ridiculously named ‘Silver Falls Institute for Occult Study,’ which treats only two patients. Nightmarish visions of ghostly twins plague one of the two. The other inmate, Jack, is about to become Renfield to an evil entity when Jordan’s dead aunt Anne, previously revealed as the twins’ true murderer, returns to wreak havoc as a ghost.

Jordan reluctantly comes back to Silver Falls after Jack kidnaps Larry to use as bait in Anne’s revenge plot. What is Anne’s aim? It’s just to kill Jordan, although Anne goes about it in convoluted fashion like only a formulaic film can. Dr. Parrish, Jordan’s roommate whose name has already evaporated, and a dimwit classmate join the journey to various degrees as “AHASF: The Return” constructs dusty dullness from clichés including a remote cabin in the woods, a sheriff dismissive of supernatural claims, and routine runaround where nothing much happens.

Low octane thrills sputter regularly, but hit a brick wall with under a half hour remaining in the runtime. Typically, macabre mysteries mount to climactic crescendos. “ AHASF: The Return” instead comes to a standstill as everyone regroups in separate locations designed to inflate the duration to 80 minutes when the film could have finished in 50.

The highest accolade up for grabs is “average.” Fishing for a compliment, acting is okay by low-budget standards. Laura Flannery houses onscreen energy her underwritten character doesn’t have opportunities to unleash. She and her co-stars have to settle for material that only permits mediocrity, although at least they exhibit experience that makes the movie’s tameness more tolerable.

Everything else lands decidedly below that “decent” mark. Underlit scenes, particularly in car interiors, and poor color grading reveal cut corners on the technical end. And unless you count new faces you’ll never care to see again anyway, a pedestrian plot adds nothing substantial to already middling mythology that’s flailing to become a franchise.

“A Haunting at Silver Falls” tried stretching relative success by squeezing sequel blood from a storytelling stone. “The Return” suggests it wouldn’t have made a difference to leave bad enough alone, which is probably where the property should remain buried. No wonder no one wants to return to the titular location, in the movie or in reality. Follow their lead and travel somewhere more intriguing instead.

Review Score: 40

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