[Locke]

Lacking a Wikipedia page, and opening with the words 'Inspired By True Events' a Haunting at Silver Falls fills you with dread from the beginning. It's just a shame it's for all the wrong reasons.

Although it takes a while to get there, when the movie hits a late second act twist, the movie really comes into its own. Everyone seems to be having the time of their life, as everything explodes into pure insanity, and everyone is allowed to indulge in some glorious scenery chewing. Although the rest of the film is way too amateurish to really be called 'good', it was worth sitting through for how entertaining the last act was.

This was a direct to disc flick, and it shows. The amateurish production, look and feel of the film undermines many possibilities for scares. And makes some sequences, which have been terrifying in other films, look downright laughable. That isn't to say there aren't some genuine scares, when the movie starts to push a whole 'is she mental' angle it actually creates some genuinely creepy scenes. And the fact that the film rarely uses jump scares, and never uses the headache inducing bass thumps to punctuate them, means many scares seem to come seemingly from nowhere and can really take you off guard. And when the real horror of the movie is revealed, you wont see it coming...

Our protagonist, Jordan is the worst person to follow around in a movie. She is completely selfish, ridiculously smug and disgustingly ungrateful. I just waited for her to get offed so we could move onto a better protagonist. Oddly enough though outside of Jordan, in the character moments, the almost porno level quality of acting actually makes some twists around certain characters feel like an actual twist, because you just wont see it coming. Although why the fuck is Erick Avari in this?