To me, this movie is perfection.

What begins as a feel-good-human-interest story turns into a mystery, then a tragedy, and ultimately an outrage.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

31 Days of Spookoween: DAY EIGHTFilm #8: We Are Still Here (2015)Review: "We Are Still Here" is one of those modern indie horror flicks that seem to be helping resurrect the genre. It is jam packed with obvious flaws and occasionally falls into the easy entrapment of cliché, but it makes up for these problems by packing a real punch in its climax and by retaining a sense of mystery and intrigue throughout. The atmosphere and silence of the film is golden, some sequences are brilliantly minimalist, and the cinematography is absolutely stunning! The special effects range in quality, but most of the gore towards the end is really fun and is pulled off very well, while the more tragic and horrific side of the film is never overshadowed by the possible silliness these effects could infiltrate into the film. The performances are mostly sort of mediocre, while some of them are quite good and others are pretty bad, but it doesn't harm the film all too much. Parts of it are so slow it becomes boring, but by the end I was grateful for this because it makes the wild finale all the more exciting! The concept, at first, feels very cliché, but as the film continues and plenty more twists and turns are established, it becomes a rather clever melding of various genre tropes that successfully come together to create a haunting and creepy premise in its own right. While not a very scary movie overall, there are certainly moments of tensity, which lead towards a final feeling of "true" horror. It's not really a masterpiece, but it is clear that the filmmakers behind this one have the potential to make a masterpiece sometime in the near future.

When I came across "We Are Still Here", I was browsing through the horror movie selection. I had not heard about this movie prior to happening to find it by sheer luck. I noticed that Barbara Crampton was in the movie, and I did enjoy watching all the horror movies that she starred in during the mid- and late-80s, especially all the Lovecraftian movies that she starred in. So I decided to watch "We Are Still Here" without even reading the synopsis.The storyline presented in "We Are Still Here" is rather generic if you have grown up with horror movies, as I have. That being said, I am not saying that the storyline was bad, but it was just something that has been seen before in many other horror movies. Writer and director Ted Geoghegan did hit the nail right on the head, because the movie worked out quite well on many levels.As for the acting in the movie, well it was actually nice to see Barbara Crampton back on the screen in a horror movie such as this, because it definitely had roots in the classic way of making horror movies. It was also nice to see Andrew Sensenig, although I wasn't familiar with him prior to this movie, but he really performed well and added a great deal of flavor to his role and character. Monte Markham also made for a short appearance, and he is always a familiar face on the screen."We Are Still Here" has a good character gallery, as the characters are well-detailed and fleshed out on the screen. They have distinct personalities and traits. It was interesting characters that did add a good amount of worth to the storyline.The special effects in the movie were good, convincing and believable. The movie wasn't an abundance of special effects, which some movies tend to be. However, despite the scarcity of the special effects, the practical and CGI effects in the movie were functional, effective and to the point in bringing the storyline to life on the screen.The music score used in the movie was rather simplistic, but it worked so marvelously for the movie, because it was very atmospheric and mood setting. The music that accompanied the scenes really helped bring the setting of the movie and the atmosphere of the movie to life.All in all, "We Are Still Here" is an adequate horror movie, though it wasn't particularly scary. But it had a really good atmosphere to it.

I decided to give this movie a chance after finding it in my local library's DVD collection. Sometimes I find hidden gems this way, but this time that was not the result. It's a somewhat slow moving exercise that feels quite stretched out, despite the running time being just eighty three minutes long. The filmmakers might have fixed that problem had they simply taken the time to answer a lot of questions that come up but are simply not answered. The direction is a little better than the script. You do feel the cold and isolation of the setting, and there is often a mildly creepy feeling. And patient gorehounds will be rewarded with some striking splatter in the movie's last half hour. However, I am at a loss as to why the movie was set in the 1970s. Though the period detail is acceptable, I would have preferred that the filmmakers taken the time and money devoted to recreating decades past to punch up the story instead. While the movie is not aggressively bad, it all the same feels half- hearted and unfinished, so I think most viewers will feel unsatisfied.

"We Are Still Here" is a tedious, disjointed horror movie, notable only for its inability - refusal, almost - to generate any fear or tension. It's one of those movies that feels like you are watching it over someone else's shoulder, or perhaps it's being shown on TV in a department store, and you can only see it through the window.The plot is not entirely hackneyed. Sure, we've seen haunted house things before, and the introduction of characters who are versed in the occult has a discouraging smack of "Paranormal Activity" about it. Where it showed promise was the idea that the house itself demands sacrifice from whoever stays there, and the townsfolk know about it.Cue the obligatory scene where the good guys go out to dinner in a pub where everyone stops talking and eyes them suspiciously. You see, all the interesting twist on the haunted house premise allowed the movie to do was throw in another clichéd scene for the price of one.The climax, when it comes, is just violence for the sake of it, that I guess we are supposed to be shocked by. Is it even possible for movie violence to shock us anymore? This is a world where "torture porn" has been a lucrative genre for well over a decade.Violence as a climax is just a lame cop out, the filmmakers admitting they're incapable of thrills and they know it, so here, have some blood and guts instead.A completely forgettable ending to a forgettable movie.