HOLY GHOST PEOPLE (2013)

Studio:       XLrator Media
Director:    Mitchell Altieri
Writer:       Kevin Artigue, Joe Egender, Mitchell Altieri, Phil Flores
Producer:  Jeffrey Allard, Phil Flores, Mitchell Altieri, Joe Egender, Kevin Artigue
Stars:     Emma Greenwell, Brendan McCarthy, Cameron Richardson, Roger Aaron Brown, Don Harvey, Joe Egender

Review Score:

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Summary:

A waitress recruits a drunken ex-Marine to help her infiltrate a fringe church group suspected of hiding her missing sister.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Waitress Charlotte intervenes when alcoholic ex-Marine Wayne is beaten in a fight outside her bar. She helps him get home and continually tries worming her way into a friendship with him, even though Wayne is gruffly resistant.

Charlotte offers Wayne $200 to drive her to nearby Sugar Mountain so that she can look for her addict sister Liz, who was reportedly living in a commune there with the Church of One Accord. Using the name Rachel, and claiming that Wayne is her father, Charlotte poses as a prospective church member as she gets to know the congregation’s spiritual leader, Brother Billy.

Billy uses poisonous snakes while preaching. Congregants include his right-hand man Brother Sherman, Brother Cole, and meek Sister Sheila.

Charlotte sneaks into Billy’s cabin. In a nightstand drawer, she finds a loaded gun along with a picture of her sister, even though Billy claimed to not know who Liz was when Charlotte asked about her. Charlotte gives the picture to Wayne and Wayne confronts Billy. Billy explains that he knew the girl in the photograph as Lila Rose. She was a troubled junkie that he accepted into his flock for healing before eventually making her his wife. When she relapsed, Billy kicked her out of the church, off the mountain, and has not heard from her since.

Wayne confronts Charlotte over whether or not what she told him about her family was the truth and the two of them have a falling out. During Brother Billy’s next service, Wayne handles one of the snakes and suffers a vicious bite. Sister Sheila tends to Wayne as he lies dying in a bed.

Charlotte confronts Billy about her sister. Billy turns their conversation into a focus on Charlotte’s guilt over being the enabler who introduced her sister to drugs. Charlotte ultimately owns up to her sins and submits to a belt whipping from Brother Sherman. Later, Charlotte and Billy are married. As they begin consummation afterward, Charlotte reaches for the gun in the nightstand and forces Billy to take her to Liz.

Billy leads Charlotte to a field where they are surrounded by congregants. Brother Sherman knocks out Charlotte with a bible. When she comes to, Billy instructs the churchgoers to stone her for her transgressions against the church. An implication is made that Liz suffered a similar fate. Armed with a shotgun, Wayne arrives suddenly and interrupts the stoning.

Wayne compels Sister Sheila to untie Charlotte despite Billy’s command for Sheila to do nothing. Brother Cole screams a warning to Wayne about a surprise attacker. Wayne shoots his assailant while the others scramble in the ensuing panic. Wayne puts Charlotte in his car and has Sheila drive her to a hospital. Cole gives Wayne the shotgun before Wayne pursues Brother Billy. After another confrontation between the two men, Billy willingly commits suicide by drowning himself in a lake.

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Review:

In an effort to find a sensible demographic to market “Holy Ghost People” towards, XLrator Media perhaps misappropriated their “Macabre” label as a way to shunt genre enthusiasts into expecting a horror thriller about dangerous cult mentalities.  “Holy Ghost People” doesn’t really fit that label, although it may not squeeze into a precisely predefined category at all.

Somewhere near the backwoods of Raylon Givens’ “Justified,” but not quite as far as the raging rapids in “Deliverance,” lies the world of “Holy Ghost People,” populated by underachieving career waitress Charlotte and alcoholic ex-Marine Wayne.  No Appalachian mountain-set movie would be complete without a bible-thumping fringe group of Jesus worshippers, which is where the Church of One Accord comes in.  With a poisonous snake on his shoulders, Brother Billy preaches the word of the Lord, and perhaps something else.  Although Charlotte is not sure what that something else is, she suspects that Billy and his congregation are behind the strange disappearance of her sister Liz, and Charlotte plans to infiltrate the group to find out if she is right.

Joe Egender plays church leader Brother Billy.  I jotted a note regarding how much Egender resembles Giovanni Ribisi, which reminded me of a similar comparison I made to someone in “The Frankenstein Theory.”  Sure enough, I went back to check on a hunch and confirmed it is the same actor in both films.  Egender does not just look like Ribisi, but he has that same dangerous dimwit stage persona perfect for portraying seemingly simple-minded characters on the outside, yet packing powder keg potential behind their deceptive personalities.

Egender is a solid performer, and he is good as Brother Billy.  But either the actor or the character, one of the two, is missing a streak of darkly hypnotic charisma that would solidify Billy as an unlit fuse of truly fearsome manipulative power.

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"Holy Ghost People" actor Don Harvey and William Forsythe: separated at birth?

Although it was perhaps more of an intention that Marketing had than the filmmakers ever did, the Church of One Accord and Brother Billy are flat out not even close to as menacing as a real-life Jim Jones or a fictional Lancaster Dodd.  Other than the vague inference of Charlotte’s missing sister and a hint of one woman possibly abused and held against her will, there are no overt signs of Manson-esque cult tendencies or Messianic delusions in their leader.  The Church of One Accord is very tame as far as questionably motivated religious movements go.  At most, they are reminiscent of an early People’s Temple, but are otherwise portrayed as having a misguided ideology rather than a hidden sinister agenda.

It is never clear if this direction is what director Mitchell Altieri had in mind from the beginning, but “Holy Ghost People” appears to position itself as a psychological thriller in the vein on “Martha Marcy Mae Marlene” when it is really a character study about purposeless people struggling to change that descriptive adjective.  Although the perception alters by the end, there is not enough inarguable corruption depicted within One Accord to make them a hate-worthy antagonist.  Intentional or not, the line between “good guys” and “bad guys” is never distinguished.  By the time the tables are turned, there is little satisfaction to be had in the course of events when the movie’s emotional draw never warrants a complete investment.

As the story progresses, main characters Charlotte and Wayne develop sketchily rationalized motives for willingly participating in church activities that grow ever stranger.  Altieri is weaving his own world of confused character purposes and perplexing people, but the viewer is left on the other side as those threads come together.  The lack of clear moral message or story purpose makes for a passive viewing experience.

“Holy Ghost People” is good as a simple drama with some underground arthouse appeal to its consistent look and alternative take on straightforward storytelling.  But there is not enough ambition to make an impact as a movie with resonance that can last outside the 90 minutes it takes to watch it.

Review Score:  60

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