Starring: Marnette Patterson, Kellan Lutz, Scott Whyte, Many Amano, Richie Chance, Ashly Rae
Directed By: Ed Winfield
Written By: Dominic Biondi, Brian McMahon
Grade: B-

Ghosts of Goldfield is set in the Goldfield Hotel of Nevada. It is said to be haunted and further more, one of the 7 portals that connects the living with the world of the dead, letting ghosts come and go as they please. However, the ghost of a woman named Elizabeth is said to be stuck in the now closed down motel. Ghosts of Goldfield seems to maintain and incorporate many of the same elements that witnesses have claimed to see or experience. Whether the story or what has been reported to happen there is true or not, Ghosts of Goldfield is still a film that clearly was inspired by the story and wanted to bring a version of this to the screen. The story by itself wouldn’t be anything great but there is a certain eeriness that this hotel does exist and paranormal activity has been at least rumored to have happened there.

Julie (Patterson) is working on her thesis, which requires her to explore the haunting of the Goldfield hotel. It has been closed down for years and really used as a museum where the ghost of Elizabeth (Rae), a women who was murdered there, remains, forced to relive her death over and over again. Julie and two of her film student friends, Chad (Lutz) and Dean (Whyte), as well as Dean’s girlfriend, Kerri (Amano) and Julie’s boyfriend, Mike (Chance), go on a road trip to the hotel to attempt to catch Elizabeth’s ghost on film. The hotel that they were supposed to have a room at doesn’t seem to exist when they get there. They end up staying at the Goldfield Hotel over night. They decide to start exploring. Before long Julie begins feeling something in their presence. Elizabeth goes inside of her mind and takes her back to the night of her murder.

The flashbacks to Elizabeth’s last moments reveal that she was a hooker at the hotel, and that she was having an affair with the owner, George Winfield. When she got pregnant George couldn’t let her have the baby and insisted on an abortion. However, it wasn’t really his baby, it was Jackson Smith’s, who worked at the hotel. A woman who looked identical to Julie is the one that reveals this to George and gets Elizabeth tortured and killed. After Julie comes out of her vision she realizes the locket her grandmother gave her was the same one that she saw on the person who betrayed Elizabeth. Chad is the only person aside from Julie that can recognize that Elizabeth was among them. When they go back to look at the footage nothing is there, just static. They soon pick up on how Elizabeth is influencing them. She starts hunting them after getting inside of their heads. Julie is still safe as long as she has the locket, but she is convinced that what happened to Elizabeth is her fault and thinks giving the locket back is the way to set things right.

The acting here isn’t all that great, but for the most part it isn’t distracting enough to ruin anything. Marnette Patterson was one of the better actors here. She gave us a fairly likeable protagonist, which was vital since not all of the characters were likeable. Her character did lose some credibility towards the end as she started making stupid decisions, but that was just due to bad writing. Kellan Lutz of Twilight fame was another who managed to give a decent performance. He gave us a believable character and was probably the most sensible out of all of them. After Julie’s scum of a boyfriend is caught cheating on her, he reveals that he always liked her. It would have been nice if we were given a little more build up to this, which would have made their connection/them finally getting together much more significant. Richie Chance was just annoying as Mike, Julie’s boyfriend. Pretty much all he did was drink alcohol and hit on other girls. He had no redeeming qualities and it was all the more fun when his character was killed, since he clearly deserved it. Still Chance gave such a flat performance, which is partially because he wasn’t a very well written character either. It would have been good if he would have been giving even the smallest shred of humanity. Mandy Amano as Kerri falls in to this category too. She was completely superficial, extremely whiny, and pretty much just looked around for what she could steal. She wasn’t likeable at all and was just an annoyance. I found myself asking what is she even doing in this movie? Soon I found out that she was there to get killed, which was completely satisfying as well as Mike’s death.

The flashback sequences were really well done. They were very stylistic, giving us an old and grainy look. Many of these shots are dark and shadowy with muted tones, portrayed in an almost blurred dreamlike state. Everything from the costumes, to the setting, to the characters and acting that bring them to life, really takes us to this place and makes us feel connected to the story. In many ways, the flashback sequences were almost better then the movie itself. The story in the present is a little weak, relying almost entirely on the back story, and stretches to make a connection between the two worlds that ends up feeling forced. Visually though, the movie outside of the flashbacks does hold up. When they first enter the hotel and are exploring it a bit there is this neon green dusty look to it that adds to the old and deserted tone. There’s a number of interesting angles and shots throughout the film that differ from the style within the past world, but still hinting at the connection.

As I said the story isn’t that good and the back story helps it quite a bit, but it really isn’t anything new in terms of ghost stories. The script was fairly poorly written and even some better dialogue could have made this much better. I don’t know how many times I heard, “That is what we’re here for”. Yes, we all know why you are in this hotel and on the off chance that we didn’t, I think after the first handful of times you can assume it has sunk in. A lot of the dialogue like this was just far too overly obvious and unnatural, taking away some of the character’s believability as well. I liked Julie pretty well until the end when she started blaming herself for what happened to Elizabeth. Yes, in the flashback the girl that betrayed her did look like Julie. However, if it was her grandma, who gave her the locket and worked at the hotel, it isn’t out of the question that they would look alike since they are related. Elizabeth did go inside her head and fed her this vision so she could have just put whatever image she wanted her to see. Since Julie wasn’t even alive it is hard to believe that she could have had anything to do with this. The ending just really confirmed her stupidity regarding this.

Despite all this though, I did have fun with this movie. I really liked the storyline of them filming to capture ghosts on screen, giving proof to the rumors of the paranormal that have been circulating in the hotel for decades. Going in to this expecting to find this and the question of how you actually face this was interesting. Also, I think this is one of the very few films I have seen that young filmmakers take on an unbelievable deathly situation and don’t get obsessed with capturing all on film. They are definitely given a few points for their intelligence here as so many other films have become far too preoccupied with this and forget about everything else including realistic characters. Of course the characters here wanted to capture it, but they had the sense to put their lives first when people started dying. Ghosts of Goldfield isn’t the smartest horror movie, and as far as ghost stories go it is only average, but through very compelling flashback sequences, great style, and satisfying deaths, it’s still a pretty fun film as long as you turn your brain off for an hour and a half.