The Ghosts of Edendale
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Actor: Christine Charters, Jay Brown, Keith Fulton, Maureen Davis (II), Paula FicaraBrand: Warnervision
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 90 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-10-19
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Lightyear Video
DVD Reviews of The Ghosts of Edendale
DVD Review: Disarmingly eerie ghost story, with a dash or two of terror
Summary: 5 Stars
"The Ghosts of Edendale" tells the tale of an East Coast couple, ambitious to make their mark in the movie biz, who rent a run-down house in L.A.'s Echo Park district. The previous occupants left in a great hurry, it seems, although the procession of mildly creepy neighbors who emerge early in the film appear not to have gotten their stories straight on exactly what happened.
We learn also that the house, which is located at the far end of a hilltop cul-de-sac, sits on ranchland once owned by early 1900s cowboy-movie icon Tom Mix, back when Echo Park was known as Edendale. It is within this context that the ghost story begins to unfold.
The filmmakers gradually transform the ambience from sunny to sinister over the course of the movie. For example, the breezes wafting through the hilltop foliage in the opening scenes are palpably soothing and inviting; by the end, the chill of those very same breezes wouldn't feel out of place in an episode of Twin Peaks.
What starts off as an almost Nancy Drew-like mystery thus evolves into a more disquieting tale as the proverbial ghosts of the title make their first fleeting appearances. An even deeper fear sets in as these apparitions grow bolder and nastier -- and as hints emerge that a key character may be possessed by the spirit of Thomas Edwin Mix himself. Although there is only one moment of real terror, involving the discovery of a murder, a nervous gloom settles in for the remainder of the movie and never entirely disappears.
Despite its horror-genre DNA, in its more thoughtful moments "Ghosts" takes some thematic cues from the psychological thriller -- chiefly the mental disintegration of an emotionally unstable and increasingly isolated character. Think "Gaslight", among others. This is a welcome departure in an era of cardboard-cutout protagonists, rapid-fire edits and increasingly over-the-top CGI effects. (Viewers should nonetheless consider themselves warned that their startle reflexes, too, will be tested at times. And it should also be noted that "Ghosts" is not itself effects-free, although the few tricks that are employed have an almost homemade feel to them, based as they are on a clever mashup of those strobey old silent films and the monochromatic video-cowboy wraiths who occasionally stride by or thunder past on their horses, six-shooters blazing.)
The pervasively low-budget feel -- no doubt born of necessity for the indie filmmakers -- is a virtue in this style of cinematic storytelling, and helps give "Ghosts" its spooky charm. Even the haunting soundtrack borrows a cheesy bit or two from the B-movies of a bygone era.
Much of the 151-minute movie has the vibe of an extended Twilight Zone episode, both in the story arc and in the sometimes intentionally wooden acting -- and most especially in the emergence of an underlying moral as the story progresses.
It is in the ending -- which will leave viewers sympathetically tut-tutting with pity over the fate of one major character -- that the film pays its most direct homage to Rod Serling's 1960s-era cult series. As the remaining pieces of the story fall grimly into place in the not-entirely-unpredictable closing scene, we half expect to see Serling himself step in front of the camera, cigarette in hand, and deliver the coda to a tale as much about the morally corrosive effects of blind ambition as it is about supernatural possession.
Description of The Ghosts of Edendale
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