Sarah Landon and the Paranormal Hour

If there's one thing kids like, it's to be scared. That's why I'm always so surprised there aren't more horror-themed films targeted at younger audiences. Sarah Landon and the Paranormal Hour is an attempt to make a PG-rated supernatural film targeted at preteens. It's not a very good attempt, but it's an attempt nonetheless. The movie has lofty ambitions of becoming a franchise, but stumbles right out of the gate with boring characters and a pace that frequently slows to a crawl, making its 80 minute running time seem to last two hours. I admire what the filmmakers were trying to do here, but the execution is just so completely off the mark.

Our title heroine is a 17-year-old girl (Rissa Walters) who decides she needs to get away after her lifelong best friend is killed in a car accident. Sarah takes a weekend holiday to a small town called Pine Valley, and reunites with an old family friend named Mrs. Shaw (Jane Harris). As soon as she arrives in Pine Valley, she learns that the town has a dark secret. Well, it's not much of a secret, as everybody in town seems to know about it and is willing to talk about it with Sarah, even complete strangers. Seems that years ago, a car crash claimed the life of the town's "Golden Boy", and the boy's father, Ben Woods (Rusty Hanes), swore vengeance on the family of the woman who caused the accident. He swore that he would kill the family's eldest son, David (Brian Comrie), on his 21st birthday - the same age his son died. Ben died of a heart attack on the day of his son's funeral, but that apparently hasn't stopped him, and he's been working on his evil plan from beyond the grave, sending spooky nightmare visions to David's mother to the point she was shipped away to an asylum. David is now a total recluse, completely obsessed with studying the paranormal and fearing for his own life as his 21st birthday rapidly approaches. David's brother, Matt (Dan Comrie), thinks his brother's as crazy as their mother, but Sarah has a feeling that their may be a lot more truth to this spooky legend than anyone might think.

"The Paranormal Hour" of the title refers to midnight to 1 AM, which is supposed to be when paranormal activity is at its peak, and also supposedly when Ben's vengeful spirit is going to be coming after David when he turns 21. The movie at least seems to have done a little bit of homework, and wants to be a film that talks seriously about paranormal beliefs. All that flies out the window when we begin to realize that Sarah Landon is about as serious about the paranormal as an episode of Scooby-Doo. What the film basically amounts to is Sarah, David, and Matt listening to a bunch of colorful locals who explain the complicated background story little by little. Everybody knows the story about Ben, from the local mechanic to random people that our heroes just happen to meet. They're all too happy to share what they know to the point that the entire population of Pine Valley comes across as a Greek Chorus. There's some suspicious people in town too, namely a spooky little boy who may or may not be the reincarnation of Ben, because he hangs around the outside of David's house all day. At one point, we catch him singing "Camptown Ladies" to himself in an eerie tone of voice for no particular reason. At that point, I questioned if he was perhaps the reincarnation of Foghorn Leghorn.

What's frustrating about all this is we never learn anything that we didn't learn in the first 10 minutes or so. We know that Ben swore vengeance and has been haunting the house he used to live in ever since, and then we get a whole bunch of scenes that just repeat this fact, as if the movie thinks we didn't get it the first time. The paranormal actually has surprisingly little to do with this movie, as a vast majority of the scares are provided by spring-loaded cats (a cat suddenly leaping into the frame while its screeching meow booms on the soundtrack), or harmless people suddenly popping up seemingly out of nowhere. (The people in Pine Valley seem to be fond of sneaking up on poor Sarah.) There is supposedly a ghost in Sarah's bedroom that messes with the lights and even the toilet, but this is never developed, nor does it seem to have anything to do with the story. Is it the ghost of Sarah's dead best friend, who is constantly brought up, but also seems to have absolutely nothing to do with anything? I honestly have no idea. I would at least think Sarah would have the decency to bring up the fact that she has a ghost in her bedroom, flushing her toilets that are supposed to be broken, but she never says a word to anyone.

Sarah Landon and the Paranormal Hour is an independently made film that was directed by a first time filmmaker named Lisa Comrie. You may notice that she shares the same last name as the actors who play the two brothers, Matt and David. This was apparently a total family affair, as many more Comries are listed in the credits as writers, producers, actors, etc. I can understand that they made this film on the cheap, but they could have at least tried to get some actors that knew how to show emotion or do decent line readings. Everyone gives a performance that seems to suggest they'd rather be somewhere else. Rissa Walters makes for an attractive female lead, but she is completely devoid of anything resembling personality. That's because the movie strangely keeps her in the background, despite her character's name being in the title. Things keep on happening around her, but she seems to mostly come across as an observer. The preteen audience the movie is obviously hoping to attract won't be able to relate to her, because there is absolutely nothing to the character of Sarah. She's the hero of the story by default, simply because the title says she is.
Before I close this review, I really must talk about my favorite part of the film, which is the climax. It involves an ancient Druid ritual concerning turnips that are carved up to look like skulls, candles, an old Halloween mask, and a shotgun-toting granny. Somehow, the movie manages to take all this and make it boring. I don't want to say anymore, risk of spoiling it should you see it, but I do want to ask one question. How is Sarah and her friends able to pull off preparations for such an elaborate ceremony in less than two hours? You try finding a bag of turnips, then carving them into perfectly molded skulls in that short amount of time. The kids in this movie obviously cheated and got help from the prop department. I'd see if it could be done myself, but I'd hate to waste a perfectly good turnip.

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