Ghost Club: Spirits Never Die, The (2015)
Matt Boiselle
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Starring Clark Sarullo, Jason Nunes, William Forsythe
Directed by Hank Blumenthal
Ghost hunters, paranormal investigators, spiritual enthusiasts – call them what you will, but PLEASE don’t discount their love or belief in what they hold so dear to their hearts. Whether you’re into spectre-spotting or not, I believe that a certain amount of testicular fortitude goes into researching some of the haunted locales that these lovers of the dearly departed venture out to in hopes of obtaining some shred of existence… or non-existance.
Director Hank Blumenthal gives us a tongue-in-cheek look at a group of these ethereal-being aficionados with The Ghost Club: Spirits Never Die, and the good news here is if you’ve been having trouble connecting with Mr. Sandman lately, this film will cure all of your sleepytime needs.
We follow a group of six “experts” as they prepare to explore Wilkinson Manor, a supposed safe haven for the remnants of the flushed out Witch Trials back in 1600’s Salem, Massachusetts. After a while had passed, and the remaining Wiccans had passed away, the mansion became a squat-shack for stinky hippies and their amateur porn industry (sounds delightful). Led through the initial tour of the facility by the ever-so-badass William Forsythe as the mansion’s caretaker, the group is set up and ready to roll for the cameras, and leading the team is the overly anally-particular Jimmy (Nunes) and his bookish-bombshell of an assistant, Tab (Sarullo). They’ve spotlighted five different areas in the manor as hotspots, and without any further to-do, a hunting we will go!
Through blacked-out hallways and colder-than-cold meat-locker like rooms, the group records by audio and video every suspected trace of ghosts they can gather, and if you like a lot of “Hello?” or “Is someone here with us?” or my personal favorite “Did you just hear that?” to permeate your viewing comfort like staccato rainfall, then LUCKY YOU. There appeared to be a landslide of opposition here between what didn’t happen and what did – what I did witness was a rather pathetic attempt at possession, two ghost-hunters getting it on due to possession, and a brawl between friends due to possession – decipher that any way you want, but the lack of scares combined with the scares offered that frankly wouldn’t have made a 10-year-old bat an eye, it all sums up to a boring retread of another entity-capturing display that you’ve all probably seen dozens of times over.
I’ll give Blumenthal credit for pulling in Mr. Forsythe for this particular project, however, because if it weren’t for his amusing (and all-too-brief) cameo, this film would have imploded and collapsed upon itself like a poorly constructed house of cards – skip this one if it you pass it in your travels.
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Film
Categorized:Reviews
