CASSADAGA (2011)

Studio:       Naedomi
Director:    Anthony DiBlasi
Writer:       Bruce Wood, Scott Poiley
Producer:  Scott Poiley, Bruce Wood
Stars:     Kelen Coleman, Kevin Alejandro, Rus Blackwell, Hank Stone, Louise Fletcher

Review Score: 

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Summary:

After a séance leaves her haunted by a ghost, a young woman is led to confront a twisted serial killer known as “Geppetto.” 

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

As a little boy, Christian Burton is admonished by his mother for wearing a girl’s dress while playing with a marionette. After his mother cuts up his dress as punishment, Christian uses the scissors to mutilate his genitals.

Lily teaches art at a children’s school. Her gifted little sister Michele visits and they excitedly discuss long term plans to move to Paris together after Michele graduates high school. Michele leaves and is killed by a school bus in the parking lot.

While moving to Florida, Lily reminisces about the time she gave her sister an Eiffel Tower necklace that hides a small blade. Lily moves into a home on the property of benefactress Claire Andersen after accepting her Merit Award scholarship to become an art student at Cassadaga University. Claire mentions that her grandson Thomas keeps to himself on the upper floor.

Lily meets Mike Hernandez, the single father of her student Haley. While retrieving a book for Claire, Lily sees Thomas masturbating in his room. Mike takes Lily out to a bar and introduces her to some of his friends. The subject of psychics comes up and Mike’s friend Cherise suggests that they all go see a renowned medium named Susan. Susan’s blind assistant Maxwell asks for a $500 donation. The friends scoff at the price, but Lily agrees to pay.

During the séance, Susan has Lily touch the arm of a vintage phonograph and asks to speak to Michele’s spirit. While the others in the room hear only the record, Lily hears Michele’s voice in her head, even though she is deaf. Michele tells Lily to wear the Eiffel Tower necklace as a means of remembering her. Another ghost then connects with Lily as items in the room begin shaking. Lily and Susan both collapse. Maxwell warns that Lily will need guidance to deal with the ghost that has manifested itself to her, but Mike brushes him off and takes Lily home.

Lily begins having strange visions involving a ghastly female. Elsewhere, an adult Christian abducts a female jogger. Lily learns that Claire smokes marijuana for her glaucoma. During a university lecture, Lily has a vision of her arm rotting with maggots before she collapses in the classroom. Mike takes her home from the hospital. Lily and Mike spend more time with each other, as well as with Haley, and end up sleeping together. Meanwhile, in a secret workshop, Christian severs the limbs off his captive and reassembles her as a human marionette.

Lily meets contractor Christian Burton when he comes to inspect the greenhouse that he built for the Andersens four years earlier. Christian mentions that the Merit Award Lily won used to be called the Promise Award, but he abruptly cuts off before revealing why the name changed. Later, Lily investigates on the Internet and discovers that a girl named Jennifer Eastman, who was the last recipient of the Promise Award, went missing in 2006. Thomas Andersen was suspected in her disappearance, but he was never charged with a crime. Lily drinks milk from the refrigerator and coughs up a mouthful of maggots before having another vision.

Lily tells Mike that she is being haunted by Jennifer, who used to live in the same house where Lily now resides. Mike is initially skeptical, but he comes to believe Lily’s story after she coughs up bloody maggots in front of him. He and Lily try to drive out of town in separate cars, but Jennifer appears to Lily and causes an accident. Mike and Lily revisit Maxwell and Susan. Susan tells Lily that the ghost will not allow Lily to leave Cassadaga until she does what the ghost wants her to do. Susan also tells Lily that the images that have flashed in her mind are connected somehow. Lily then begins painting the images from her visions.

Mike visits his police friend Officer Hall and asks for the file on Jennifer Eastman. Mike and Lily decide to investigate Thomas Andersen on their own. Mike acts as a lookout while Thomas takes Claire to a doctor’s appointment. Lily picks the lock to Thomas’ room and copies files from Thomas’ computer. She drops her phone before trying unsuccessfully to pick the lock on a trunk and misses Mike’s text message that the Andersens have returned. Lily first hides in the closet and then underneath Thomas’ desk. When Thomas returns to masturbate at his computer, Lily uses the Eiffel Tower necklace to short circuit an AC outlet. She escapes the room when Thomas leaves to check the breaker with his grandmother. With the stolen computer files, Mike and Lily discover photographs that show Thomas was stalking Jennifer Eastman. Back in his workshop, Christian kills the jogger after using her as a marionette.

Lily has another encounter and collapses in front of Mike and Haley. Mike later tells Lily that he cannot see her anymore because his ex-wife is using Lily’s behavior and Mike’s relationship with her as a means of taking custody of Haley. Frustrated, Lily knocks over the paintings that she has been creating and realizes that they form a larger image depicting the Andersen’s greenhouse.

That night, Lily enters the greenhouse and breaks into a locked room where she finds a crop of marijuana plants. Lily moves the plants aside and finds a trapdoor in the floor. She follows it to a cellar and finds the decayed corpse of Jennifer Eastman.

Thomas confronts Lily when she tries to leave. She tells him that she called the police and he begins struggling with her. Officer Hall arrives and takes Thomas into custody. The media dubs the killer “Geppetto” because of the way he turned his victims into puppets. Lily is placed in a hotel only to discover that Jennifer is still haunting her.

Because Thomas only admits to the marijuana, and not to the murders, Officer Hall goes to interview Christian since he was the one who built the greenhouse and the cellar. Lily stays in the back of the police car. During the interview, Hall pieces together that Christian is actually the killer, but Christian kills him. Christian fires a bullet into the police car and drops in a liquid that knocks Lily unconscious.

Lily awakens wearing a dress in Christian’s workshop. Christian wears a dress and an apron while building pieces for his next human puppet. Lily manages to escape in an SUV and Christian follows her in his truck. While distracted, Lily rolls her vehicle and is injured. As Christian approaches, Lily crawls towards the sign indicating the border of Cassadaga. Jennifer’s ghost appears and distracts Christian, allowing Lily to pick up his dropped scissors and stab Christian to death. Lily then has a vision of reliving the moment when she gave Michele the necklace as the two sisters come to be at peace with one other.

In a post-credits scene, Lily watches from a distance as Mike teaches Haley to play baseball. When Lily leaves, she is confronted by the frightening apparition of a young boy.

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Review:

Situated between Daytona Beach and Orlando is the Florida community of Cassadaga.  Thanks to its heavy concentration of spiritual mediums, Cassadaga has garnered itself a reputation for being the “Psychic Capital of the World.”  As the setting for the film with same name, it makes an ideal backdrop for a tale of séances gone wrong and a ghastly haunting.  Yet “Cassadaga” only needs the location for a launch pad, as its tale delivers far more kick than a typical ghost story.

Life has been hard on Lily.  Already coping with post-lingual deafness, the untimely death of their parents gave Lily legal guardianship over her gifted younger sister Michele.  Tragedy strikes again when Michele is taken too soon, leaving Lily to find a fresh path for herself on an art scholarship at Cassadaga University.  Lily starts a new romance and takes up residency in the old Southern home of wealthy benefactress Claire Andersen and Claire’s oddly reclusive grandson Thomas.

Kelen Coleman, familiar to fans of HBO’s “The Newsroom” as Maggie’s roommate Lisa Lambert, gives Lily exactly what the part needs: accessible charm and a buoyant personality that is believable without cheaply tugging at the viewer’s sympathies.  Believing her character as deaf can be a hard sell though, as it requires a reminder in moments when that fact is underutilized or unimportant.

After Lily attends a presumably harmless psychic reading to contact her dead sister, she unwillingly attaches herself to a ghost that has plans of its own.  Lily is about to become a central figure in the web of a sadistic stalker that the media refers to as “Geppetto.”

They may have transvestitism in common, but Geppetto makes Buffalo Bill look sane by comparison.  Geppetto earns his moniker from an evil predilection for turning victims into ghoulish marionettes.  Severed limbs are fitted with mechanical joints as the murderer builds an unimaginable living nightmare.  When Geppetto screams a banshee shriek of sexual frustration and fury while putting on his own personal puppet show, “Cassadaga” shows its own frightening ability to offer a uniquely disturbing portrait of a macabre serial killer.

“Cassadaga” balances its tortured captive imagery by adding a harrowing take on a vengeful ghost haunting.  The blend of real world brutality with poltergeist activity keeps “Cassadaga” moving forward even in moments when it stalls to overdevelop subplots or to lean on rote cinema conventions.

The screenplay could have used a Geppetto of its own to make itself more fluid and maneuverable in the character department.  Earlier acts almost bury themselves under a mountain of lengthy backstory that makes for authentic personalities, yet matters little to the overall story beats.

“Cassadaga” intends to be several different films rolled into one, but the time devoted to certain arcs smothers some of the momentum.  The script has trouble with juggling the pages given to each person and with forcing purpose into their individual roles.  Lily is given a romance that fleshes out her character, but scenes of relating with her single father beau take up a lot of real estate for a character that is suddenly dropped before the main storyline even mounts towards its climax.

In the opposite vein, Louise Fletcher is underutilized while becoming conspicuous by her own absence later in the film, too.  The movie also invests in a red herring that never quite works for reasons that are obvious from the prologue scene.  Had the characters fit better into the way the plot moves, “Cassadaga” could have rode at a swifter clip.

What is really interesting about the film’s value is that on their own, the individual story threads initially appear as though they do not offer anything new.  On top of that, “Cassadaga” tries to get away with cheap tricks like an assembly of creepy dolls in the killer’s workshop, old timey music crackling on a vintage phonograph during the spirit summoning, and a gaggle of puzzle piece paintings that reveal a larger image.

And yet in spite of what seems to be a series of potentially overused tropes, the blend of these elements into the multiple sub-genres pushes “Cassadaga” past its overdeveloped characters and sometimes choppy sequencing for what is ultimately an engaging horror film.  Getting past the things that “Cassadaga” fumbles over is an easy task when there is so much more that the film does right.  And what it does right is it delivers a memorable murderer, a captivating heroine, and enough ghost-charged atmosphere to recommend it as both supernatural suspense and as a serial killer thriller.

NOTE: There is a post-credits scene.

Review Score:  75

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