If you are a serious fan of intelligent scary movies, you frequently find yourself wading through Luke-warm to unbelievably bad dreck, looking for the real gems in the genre.
*This* is the kind of movie you're hoping for.
_Deadwood Park_ is a great example of personal passion, creativity, cinematic technique and a strong story, completely overcoming the lack of a big budget. It's thrilling to watch a classic style pulled off with this much heart and soul. Entertaining and engrossing.
On a micro-budget, the filmmakers have built a slow-burn, atmospheric ghost story with some truly harrowing suspense and chills. Making use of great use of locations, this movie is beautifully shot and deliberately paced. It takes its time, but delivers some remarkable and evocative sequences - from a gas-lamp search of an abandoned second floor, to a harrowing WWII battle flashback (filmed with local re-en-actors). A moody ambient score and effective sound-design give these scenes exactly the bite they need, and near-brilliant use of composition.
All of this would be for nothing without a story worth telling, and this is a place too many indies fall down on. But not here. I can't tell you how delightful it is to be halfway through a movie and _not_ have a clue where it is going. And it turned out that even my suspicions didn't guess the half of it. There is a big story being told here. A smart, literate, novel-like structure full of striking details and themes. Historical flashbacks and visual devices that I found very rewarding. While some of the dialogue is un-remarkable, it's not annoying and seems to support the common-place feeling of the place and the characters.
The only thing I felt detracted were a few performances. The wordless suspense scenes are completely effective, but I found a couple of the actors to be unconvincing in scenes involving dialogue. I know they were going for very low-key, naturalistic performances, but IMHO the movie would have benefited from stronger screen presence.
Still, this is terrific work, an inspiring movie for Indie-filmmakers, and *essential* viewing if you're a fan of old-style ghost stories in a Bava-esquire vein. I strongly recommend _Deadwood Park_.
