WillSushyMedia
This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.
Lucia Ayala
It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.
Fleur
Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.
Andariel Halo
This is an odd little film, further oddened by the fact that apparently it wasn't properly transferred to Amazon Prime in terms of aspect ratio, because it's supposed to be in widescreen, but for some reason comes out in full screen, with the black bars on top and bottom, so it's only taking up like 2/3rds of the screen.At first I thought it was supposed to be in full screen, as it begins with an inexplicable murder sequence set in 1982 yet supposedly filmed on some kind of 1950s or 60s style reel camera. As the camera repeatedly cuts to multiple shots, including some impossible ones like several feet behind a solid wall, it's increasingly unclear what the point of this footage is or what it's supposed to be in-universe. No mention of this footage is made ever again and it's completely unnecessary. They could have used it the way they do later on, splicing fragments and clips in like "visions".
Once it gets to the real film itself, it turns to a more conventional camera, though with a rather odd framerate that, mixed with its introductory style, makes it look and feel like a Forensic Files-style re-enactment documentary. They go with this style for about 20 minutes before dropping it and going for a purely conventional style movie... but continuing in the odd framerate/shooting style of a true crime re-enactment, complete with a solitary piece of repetitive music that is used and re-used in every spooky scene that sounds like it was pecked out on a casio keyboard.
the film itself covers a paranormal investigator named Carter who is investigating a house owned by an inexplicably successful 28-year old who inherited it from his father, who in turn inherited it from his brother who was murdered with his children by his wife, who then apparently drowns a baby. This is the murder we see at the beginning of the film.
Inexplicably, the guy wants her to work with two other people; a cameraguy friend of his, and a writer. Once they all meet and come to the house, they're met up with a woman, Mary Young Mortenson, for whom I give credit to the actor for not portraying in the stereotypical uptight Christian conservative zealot but making her somewhat believable, willing to curse and talk about guys and actually be reasonable when confronted with non religious people instead of constantly jabbering about god.
The flip side of this potentially "realistic" portrayal is that it may just be so terribly written and acted that it is only accidentally believable. The acting is indeed terrible, yet ironically it is about the exact same caliber of stilted, awkwardly wooden acting that you get from true crime documentary re-enactments. If that were the intention, it would better explain the bad acting, while throwing in the potential mystery of what the hell happened in the editing room to edit out the "documentary style".
The plot is a boring foray into this group scouting out a supposedly haunting house and experiencing spooky ghosty events using some of the worst little visual effects and clumsily spliced in backmasked audio.
Virtually nothing happens other than some scattered, unconvincing "ghost" appearances while the people involved all bicker and fight constantly, mostly with Mary Young. These encounters are hilarious for all the wrong reasons, and culminate in the obvious revelation that Mary Young was not originally invited by the owner of the house as she'd said, but just a crackpot member of the murder victim's church who occasionally shows cult-like devotion to him and his memory.
While the group finds mounting evidence that the original man of the house was a bad and devious man, Mary Young refuses to hear of it and has a freakout that leads to her leaving. She then calls in to a religious radio show complaining about them, and then comes back to wear a weird religious box-helmet thing, then kill them all, or something. It's not entirely clear what was happening.
After that, we get an extremely long sequence, filmed even more in true crime documentary re-enactment style, with Mary Young's voice-over narration. Turns out the original man of the house was a very bad man, as he takes in a moronic couple's teenage daughter who they say has been a "whore", and chains her up in the attic and rapes her repeatedly over several weeks. The wife is fully aware of all this, and the husband also has sex with her, while making her wear the religious box-helmet contraption. The girl gets pregnant and gives birth, and the wife finally loses it and the murder we saw at the beginning is revealed in full, and it's then revealed the baby didn't drown in the bathtub and was rescued by a police cop named Mortenson, and it's revealed that baby was Mary Young Mortenson, who then comes out of the narration and kills herself in the same way as the wife did.
Rather than ending now, the film goes on painfully to apparently show Carter as a ghost in the house now, and by this point the story has long since ended and what unfolds here is a sad epilogue to a poorly-made film lamenting the fate of a character no one cares about.
trishaade
Average horror movie regarding a paranormal investigator who is assessing a house for supernatural activity. Due to the title, you know what happens to her in the end. It is done as a documentary style film, so it almost resembles found footage. The movie is more spooky than scary.The genre has been done to death and there are many better movies out there about ghost hunters. This one, however, isn't too bad and was a little better than I expected. Parts of it are really creepy.There are some issues with bad acting here and there and at times the dialog seemed a little silly, but overall it was certainly watchable and generally held my interest. Most of the actors did okay with their roles with the exception of the father. I also had a hard time with the casting of the church girl - I didn't find her believable at all. She did okay with what she was given, but I wish they had cast someone who didn't look so hardened.Because the writer wants you to believe this is a documentary (it isn't), night vision film is used sporadically - it shows as green and is common in these types of movies. If you have ever seen shows about paranormal investigations, you'll know what I'm talking about. Part of the film also concerns the investigator's journal entries which might run some folk's nerves.The movie runs at 1:45 so it is longer than most. As other reviewers have said, I think it could have been cut by at least 15 minutes and still told the story it wanted to tell. The back story of what actually happened in the house occurs towards the end of the movie so most of the loose ends are tied.Finally, this isn't a splatter or CGI film, so if that's your thing, you might want to skip it. Otherwise, its just okay - not great, but not bad.
dawulf
OK. Not all the actors are very good. That being sad, this is actually a pretty good movie.The title says it all but the road to the hunters death is interesting. A bigger budget may have made it even better but they did pretty good as it was. A ghost hunter, film crew, and a representative of the church walk into a haunted house...sounds like the set up to a joke. What happens next is there attempt to document the haunting and the ghost hunter becomes personally involved. A nice twist to the end. The best thing I can say about any movie is that I would watch it again and I could definitely watch this one again.
Paul Magne Haakonsen
Another alleged true documentary of a paranormal phenomena. "Death of a Ghost Hunter" proves to be entertaining, but I didn't buy this to be true for even a moment. The whole thing was just to staged for that.Now, don't get me wrong, "Death of a Ghost Hunter" is good entertainment, and it does have an interesting and somewhat creepy story. And it does well at building up suspense. However, this is a movie meant to entertain, so take this movie for what it is, not for what it is intended to be.The setting of the movie is quite good, because it is set in a well-kept house that looks good on the outside, but has a very dark and brooding feel once inside. You should know that the movie is shot mostly in the dark, with either night vision camera or very little lighting, so don't expect a well-lit movie where you see everything. This lack of lighting does work well for the movie, as you are kept in suspense and kept in the dark (duh!)."Death of a Ghost Hunter" tells the story of a family killed in a house, and now the house is apparently haunted. The owner of the house hires a paranormal investigator, a reporter and a film man to do an investigation into the activities within the house. They are joined by a young girl from the church, and slowly, events start to happen at night, revealing the tragic events that occurred. However, not everything is as it seems... There is a nice twist to the story, though it wasn't all that difficult to figure it out before it was initially revealed in the movie.The acting in "Death of a Ghost Hunter" was actually good enough, and the cast was all unknown faces, to me at least. People did good jobs with their given roles. You should know that the movie is limited to a short list of cast and characters, however it doesn't hinder the movie in any way."Death of a Ghost Hunter" is in the likes of "Paranormal Activity" and "The Blairwitch Project", so if you liked those types of staged documentaries, then you might want to give "Death of a Ghost Hunter" a chance as well.