loomis78-815-989034 Review of Ghosts of Goldfield

Ghosts of Goldfield (2007 Video)

Talent behind the Camera is wasted on Lousy Script

[5/10 · 23 February 2014]

Five young filmmakers go to the deserted Goldfield Hotel in Nevada in hopes of filming Elizabeth (Ashly Margaret Rae) the wife of the owner of the hotel whose spirit roams the halls looking for her lost baby. Her affair with a bartender (Roddy Piper) leads to a baby that her husband George Winfield (Chuck Zito) had killed along with Elizabeth. The crew searches the halls acting like school kids rather than a documentary crew with the ghost sliding past and all around them. Two members of the crew Mike (Richard Chance) and Keri (Amano) seem to think the reason they are there is to party, flirt and hang out being completely unaware that they are in a haunted hotel and what their mission is. Group leader Julia (Patterson) quickly realizes her Grandmother may have had something to do with the death of Elizabeth and the group can't escape outside the hotel. Decent Direction by Edwin Winfield and excellent cinematography by Adrian M. Pruett and Roland "Ozzie" Smith cannot disguise the terrible screenplay by Dominic Biondi and story by Brian McMahon. This is a shame because the filmmakers are quite talented and make the most of the location. The story is by the numbers and when you add two of the most annoying characters (Mike & Keri) a horror film has seen in a long time, the film can't overcome it. The dialog is absurd and downright laughable at times. The filmmakers create a good atmosphere only to have it ruined by stupid actions of the characters. There still manages to be a few scares and some gore thrown in but the relentlessly bad script keeps sinking any momentum the film gets going. A lot of talent behind the camera is wasted. It seems pretty clear this team could have made a good low budget horror film with real pay offs if they had any kind of script to work with.