By Night's End

Review by Brittany

A small-budget home invasion film, By Night’s End combines elements of suspense, drama, and crime to tell the story of a married couple who must overcome their inner demons in order to survive a challenging night of being terrorized.

Despite being a rather small production, the movie comes off as one of the more well-made indies and it’s clear that a lot of care and energy went into this project. I was impressed by the choreography of the (too-few) hand-to-hand fight sequences, some of the more interesting moments of camerawork, and by the high performance level of the cast.

Unfortunately, it’s not all sunshine and roses. The writing is often clumsy. The poor actors do their best, but can’t quite sell, some overly melodramatic moments of “tragic backstory” that mostly feel shoe-horned in. There were a few other missteps in here that could have been fixed with another set, or two, or three, of eyes looking over the screenplay. An outside editorial hand could have fixed a lot of the problems in writing, but some things, including the couple seemingly knowing nothing about crime scene forensics despite everyone in the country being about 20 years into a cultural obsession with true crime and shows like CSI, NCIS, Bones, and Forensic Files, are probably unfixable and needed to undergo a slight re-write.

I wanted to praise the story for twisting the expectation a bit and having the homestead protector as the female lead instead of the man, but then I felt the dialogue undercut that message by repeatedly poking at the man as being “soft” and weak. I’d rather the movie just forgo commenting on it at all, and present us with a reality where people don’t care about the gender of the person holding (or not holding, as the case may be) a gun to their head- but maybe that’s just me.

Overall, it’s a well-made movie, but that can’t quite save it from the mistake of having only one pair of hands in charge of writing, direction, AND editing. It is a shame, because with a bit of a re-imagining of character motivations/behavior, and a few tweaks to plot points, this could really be something interesting. As it stands, I would rate it mediocre, but still pleasantly surprising, thanks to good technical aspects.

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BY NIGHT’S END

Directed By Walker Whited

Staring Michelle Rose, Michael Aaron Milligan, Kurt Yue

By Night’s End will be released by DarkCoast Worldwide on Digital platforms October 6.

Thanks to DarkCoast for Prerelease screening access to make this review possible

Listen to Kenny and Austen’s full podcast, Oct 6.

Ghost in the Graveyard

Shiloh Verrico as Martha, the titular Ghost in the Graveyard

The small town of Mt. Moriah has a dark secret. Sally Sullivan (Kelli Burgland) who returns home with a new baby after nine months away knows a little, while also carrying the secret of her whereabouts during her time away. Her dad Charlie (Jake Busey) and the local Sheriff (Royce Johnson) know a lot more but they’re not sharing much.

You see, ten years ago a children’s game of hide and seek in a cemetery took a tragic turn when Sally’s friend Martha (Shiloh Verrico) was murdered and sacrificed by witches conducting a ritual nearby. Since then Martha has haunted Sally and the rest of the gang as the titular Ghost.

Secrets are a major driver of the story and the search for answers by Sally is mostly compelling and good creepy atmosphere keeps the tension high. Some horror troupes are to be found here of course and comparisons my be drawn to several other horror and thriller films including the Nightmare on Elm Street reboot but there’s a fair amount of uniqueness here as well, in particular a reveal in the last act about the true nature and history of the Sullivan family.

There are good performances by all the major players here and great production value helped along by the use of drone photography (remember when helicopter shots were expensive?) and ghost makeup that serves its ghostly purpose well.

A few loose ends and unanswered questions that left us scratching our heads and a slight bit too much troupieness keep Ghost in the Graveyard from being as good as it could have been but is overall a well worth seeing, solid effort by first time writer/director (Charlie Comparetto). We look forward to seeing what he conjures up next.

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Ghost in the Graveyard will be released on November 5th on digital platforms including Amazon, Hoopla, Vimeo on Demand, and FANDANGO and on DVD December 3rd

(Full spolier We Watch Movies audio review will be released on November 5th as well)

Thanks to DARKCOAST for providing an early access screening to make this review possible.