Ghost Storm

Every now and then SyFy Channel manages to dish out a movie that surprises in a good way and turns the general view on their production upside down. "Ghost Storm", despite the lame name, was actually one such movie. It thoroughly entertained me from start to end, although it was a bit predictable.

The story is about a small island community where something heinous lurks beneath the surface of their idyllic front. The island perish harbors a dark secret. A group of young people are in the graveyard at night when lightning unleashed the dark secret, and spirits emerge from their grave to wreck havoc on the community.

For a SyFy Channel original movie, then the effects in "Ghost Storm" was actually quite good. I especially liked the way that the ghostly mist was moving, it looked nice. However, it would have been nice to see more man-like details on the mist, so you knew that these were indeed ghostly entities, and not just a sentient mist.

The acting in the movie was also quite good, only a single familiar face or two in the cast list. But people, in general, did good jobs with their given roles.

However, "Ghost Storm" is the type of movie that you watch once, and is not likely to watch ever again. It just doesn't have that kind of quality to it. It should be said that compared to many other of SyFy Channel's original movies, then "Ghost Storm" is quite good.

Most SyFy channel movies, with a few exceptions, range from lame to trash. Ghost Storm is one of their movies that isn't too lame and it is certainly isn't trash. It could have been much better sure, for such a good concept it was somewhat of a missed opportunity, but for a SyFy Channel movie it's tolerable. The scenery and lighting are quite creepy, and the editing and special effects actually show time and effort. The opening in the graveyard and the house ambush were also atmospherically effective, and the acting by all is quite good especially the two leads(Crystal Allen the slightly stronger of the two), who also share a sweet chemistry. Apart from a few scenes though, Ghost Storm is lacking in thrills and scares, the pace was too draggy for it to be thrilling and the scares were more predictable than they were shocking. The story has some good ideas and has its moments but can come across as too silly and formulaic with some scenes and strands that are introduced and touched upon but not developed enough. The script is also rather underwritten and can lack flow as well as too much of the cheese factor, thankfully though it is actually nowhere near as bad as most SyFy channel movie scripts(most of the time the script is one of the worst things about them). The ghosts look good and are not entirely personality-less, just that their personalities could have been even stronger, we know they're angry and such but not much else. Overall, not a bad film but could have done more with the ideas they had. 5/10 Bethany Cox

The first few minutes has teens in a graveyard when a storm breaks out and one of the boys is turned into a mouldy old corpse. Had a bit of a promising 80s feel about it. Sadly it went downhill from there. Something about an electrical storm being the souls of the dead wanting revenge for a mass killing. Or something. I pretty much gave up trying to follow the reasoning behind it as it was just so ridiculous. The Fog this certainly isn't! Lots of CGI on show, pretty cheap looking though I have seen much worse. Acting is OK, nice locations. No sex. swearing or gore. Tame, silly nonsense..

Ghost Storm (2011)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Former couple Ashley (Crystal Allen) and Hal (Carlos Bernard) must fight a mysterious storm that is killing people on their small island. This isn't your typical storm because this one is built upon the spirits of a group of people who killed themselves years earlier and now they've come back for revenge. GHOST STORM has some good stuff scattered throughout it but in the end its just way too serious to be taken serious and it's certainly never scary. Writer-director Paul Ziller has a couple interesting ideas floating around here including how evil can build itself up in something like a storm but for me it just never really added up to anything memorable. I found way too many moments to be rather silly and especially the scenes where the spirits would have their images show up on people's cell phones. I'm sorry but this was just a bit too much for me. I also didn't know why the film was pretty much blood free during the first half only to then turn on the gore during the second half. I did think the performances were actually pretty good and this is especially true for the two leads. I thought Allen and Bernard had some really good chemistry together and they really came across like a real couple. The supporting players were also good in their roles. I'll also give credit to the special effects, which were much better than you'd normally see in a film like this. Still, GHOST STORM is just way too silly for it to really work and the lack of scares is just a death nail.

When a series of strange accidents leave the residents of a small island community frightened of a mysterious electrical storm, a group of survivors try to solve the long-hidden reason for it's release to placate the storm and restore peace on the island.

A pretty middling affair overall, though it's also frustratingly full of potential that could've made this one quite enjoyable had they been utilized more. The general concept of the storm and it's creation are quite clever with the revelation made late about it's true origins and intent make for a really neat twist to the formula, as well as a pretty original tactic of having it form a moving tentacle-of-mist that snakes out and calcifies victims to turn them into dust which creates a couple creepy scenes including the graveyard opening and the house ambush. It's got some action as well when it whips through the main street of the town harvesting bodies, and the final measure of defeating it generates some fun. Unfortunately, the fact that there's no consistency in the beings' actions since it'll turn them to dust in the beginning then vaporize them later, seemingly at random points in the script, makes no sense and the objects fascination with modern technology is never really explored so it's quite distracting. The usual Sci-Fi Channel problems are still in effect, so those as well work against this one to lower this one significantly.

Rated R: Violence and Language.