October Horror Challenge 2019 #1: "A Haunting at Silver Falls: The Return"

I actually really loved the original "A Haunting at Silver Falls." It was like a young adult horror novel brought to life. I used to love reading those when I was younger (hell, I love reading them now). Give me some teens battling ghosts or vampires or werewolves, whatever, and I'm happy. The original movie was low-budget but fun, and I was excited to see there was a sequel available. Excited but apprehensive, because I didn't want the sequel to suck and be a huge waste of my time. Hope springs eternal though, right?

This movie picks up where the original left off. The ghostly twins from the original movie seem to not have moved on to the afterlife, meaning some bad ghostly juju is still going on. The main character from the original movie is trying to move on with her life, but she's still haunted (both literally and metaphorically) by the past. A doctor who specializes in treating patients who have the ability to see ghosts wants to investigate the ghostly happenings of the first film and find out if they have a connection to what is happening now, and if so, how to stop the haunting once and for all.

I was impressed with how well this movie held together. The acting is good (which is one of the things I liked best about the first movie, since low-budget horror flicks can tend to have terrible acting). I also like how the story grows from the events of the first movie. The characters have graduated high school and moved on to college, and the new characters are interesting and not just tacked on to increase the possible body count. There are college roommates who think ghost hunting is cool, and the psychologist who runs the new facility was married to the psychologist from the first movie, so she has a vested interest in figuring out what is going on and putting a stop to it.

The ghost effects seem better to me in this movie than they did in the original.  Maybe that's all in my head, but I still appreciate the effort. There are lots of cool jump scares too, like there were in the original, buy there's also some sadistic and mean-spirited behavior from the new baddies, which tied into the sadistic creepiness of the characters from the first movie. It's cool to see some horror that's all too human mixed in with the ghostly malevolence. All in all, I really enjoyed this movie. It's not perfect, but it's a fun little creepy film that lives up to the good memories o have of the first one.