BASED ON A TRUE STORY - SOMEWHERE

THE TRUTH? YOU. CAN'T. HANDLE. THE. TRUTH. WHATEVER IT IS...

Silver Falls aka A Haunting At Silver Falls (2013)

And a haunting we will go.... the only reason I even bothered with this piece of... film is that it was made in Oregon and supposedly based on a true story. Well guess what - it was. Oregon is a real state, there is a town of Stayton and there is a Silver Falls State Park. We'll ignore that the film was actually done in Salem and Silverton. And there has to be an unsolved murder SOMEWHERE in the Country, right? Twins? Ghosts? Hey, it doesn't say the WHOLE movie is a true story. DUH. 

But I must admit I had to make some adjustments on my horror movie worksheet as it threw a couple of curves in what is the most unscary horror movie I have ever seen. Unscary's not a word? Well it's BASED on a true word, so there.

Now as I've been whining on my FB page my arms and hands are currently at about 30% capacity (long boring story - never mind) and people with fibro don't just bounce back so if I take a few shortcuts here I think you can forgive me.

Our young heroine's name is Jordan so I want her dead already. Actually the actress who played her (Alix Gitter - thank mom and dad for THAT moniker) did okay for someone with very little to work with and a whole lot of screen time. So her Twilight excuse for a facial expression is she's lost her mom then her dad and now has to move from L.A. to a podunk town in Oregon. I live in Oregon so I can call them podunk towns with affection. Hey, YOU can't use that expression - it's OUR word! (See how dumb that sounds folks?)

So now she's living with her aunt, who's her mother's twin sister, and her aunt's husband. Right from the start he gives off that creepy vibe so I'm filling in my worksheet with confidence. A lingering look, a touch that's not quite - right and you know something's up or going to be up with that guy. Being the typical teenager, Jordan attends a party at Silver Falls which in this movie is more of a hangout than a park. Of course they're raided and as they all flee through the forest Jordan finds a ring and automatically puts it on and forgets it. Bad, bad rubber piggy.

Now she's starting to be followed by a slimy girl with long hair (sigh) who wants that ring. Why? Why not? She's pursued and it isn't long before everyone she knows is against her, accusing her of being delusional since she has a 'checkered' past - plus the strain of losing her mom to drowning/suicide and her father to leukemia. And the ghost is dogging her and we're getting tired of it 'cause okay, she has a slimy friend but NOTHING IS HAPPENING. No deaths, no scares, no gore.... geez I'd even go for a cheap beheading at this point.

So she finds out that twin girls were murdered by their father, who was tried and convicted and sits on death row, about to be executed. In a brilliant move of parenting and psychology, everyone is convinced she has to talk to him to convince her that she doesn't see ghosts. They arrange for her to see him. On the night of his execution. As he's eating his final ice cream treat. Yeah that happens all the time nowhere in the world ever. 

Oh, and when he sees she's wearing his daughter's ring, she learns it was some signal of unity for all of them, a three piece ring they each wore one piece of. He gives her his... uh, wait. He's a convicted murderer about to be fried and he has personal jewelry on? The movie got stupider and stupider and my already waning interest was getting... wanier. Based on another true word.

Once she has the ring, things change. Now she has BOTH girls following her (Why only one at first? Dunno.) and with their help (Help?) she knows she needs to leave NOW. I would have figured that out myself when they locked her in the bathroom for the night - do that to me once and I'm gone. But... she's being carefully watched until with the power of the two rings (don't ask) makes her bedroom window opens and she sees a school bus with the twins in it. And her locked bedroom door opens. She leaves and gets on the bus. I wish I could have ridden a ghost school bus, it was brand spanking new. Duh.

But it made no sense and that's the main point of the movie - it's a bunch of events that put together make no cohesive story that you can follow. I mean at one point the ghost tries to drown Jordan but she needs her help? The ghost wants the ring back, even mangling Jordan's finger trying to get it but wants her to wear it as it keeps appearing back on her finger even  if she manages to get it off? 

You go through the movie not really going WTH... 'cause it's impossible to care that much. A What? suffices and you won't get answers so don't be disappointed.

So to wrap the movie up since I've already given it a whole lot more coverage than it deserved, Jordan feels she is going mad like her mother. But her mother wasn't mad or suicidal - her aunt killed her. Why? Apparently good ole' aunt and uncle are your ultimate S&M couple and she's the top. She enjoys it - a lot. 

He's into the pleasure, she's into the pain. So their basement is set up for their... games. All bodies (when they're finished with them) get dumped into the Falls. Okay that was... not expected. I thought the uncle would be the baddie - that was sexist of me, wasn't it? The aunt was even more bloodthirsty and psychotic than he was.

I don't really blame myself too much though - this was a formulaic ghost story with a bunch of nonsense events occurring for no particular reason in no particular order. A small twist just added to the confusion. So Jordan and her boyfriend, who refreshingly is a smart, glasses wearing kind of nerdy kid, overpower the two, knock them out, tie 'em up and put them in a in-floor type of box they'd constructed to keep their 'toys' in. Both dead girls are there, watching. 

As Jordan and her boyfriend prepared to leave he says (and I can't believe he could say it with a straight face and she acted like it was the most rational sentence on the planet), "New rule. Ghosts can hurt you - if you hurt them." They smile at each other and leave. The two dead girls wait until the tied up couple wakes up, then descends upon them, knocking the door over the pit closed and we hear screams. Ummm, what? What the hell does that mean and why does that end the story?

Oh well, don't look a gift horse in the mouth, 'cause here comes the credits.