Altergeist (2014)

I picked this movie because it takes place in a haunted winery, and I love me some wine. There were four movies that it reminded me of; Blair Witch Project, April Fool's Day (favorite horror movie), The Ring, Tron, and Hellraiser thrown in for good measure. The blend actually worked.I was a bit worried at first with the shaky hand cam going on, but it was briefly at the beginning and too much throughout. This is where the Blair Witch Project came in. And while I really loved the Blair Witch because that was the first I had seen of that style of filming, I quickly became annoyed with it since it seemed to be in every horror movie afterwards.As for the April Fool's Day part, it was how they were all introducing themselves on camera at the beginning. Along with the gratuitous sexy body shot, and someone having a gun when they were not supposed to have one.The Ring was more so towards the end with the twitchy person coming out of the basement (well), and how they flickered… I think there might have even been a groan or two from them. Hellraiser because of the alternate dimensions and Tron for all the pretty grid/laser lights.I enjoyed the movie. The death scenes were not anything unique; a gun in the mouth, bludgeoning, drowning, etc… The ending had a fun little twist.There were a couple parts where I was like, Really! You are there to capture paranormal, but when you go off on your own to explore, you don't bring a camera or anything with you. But of course, it's more spooky when people are alone.The other thing was the music. I love horror movies where I am getting tense and realize it's in part because of the music. But the score on this one was a bit too much in your face at times, not subtle at all.All in all, it was a fun horror movie with some Sci-Fi thrown in.

What can one pontificate upon when one has viewed a film whose core basis has been done too many times to count. A group of ghost hunters enter a location which we are informed is the "MOST haunted" in the U.S. We are then informed they are the first ghost hunters afforded this opportunity. How was it determined it is the most haunted if no one has ever been there checking out that aspect of it ever before?All inexperienced ghost hunter can afford ritzy offices and an obviously limitless budget for expensive equipment!Group accesses property, spiritual shenanigans ensue and then we find out aliens are inextricably woven into the plot.Best scene in the movie: Pregnant woman in hallway about to assailed by ghost that is really just a black and white CGI composite when a bright light appears under the door. Door flies off hinges and a plasma ball enters the corridor and dis-incorporates the specter. Plasma erupts from the ball and we see Jeff Bridges and Tron appear and solidify. Boldly they step through the door to bravely face what lies beyond with their discs in hand!I never saw that coming at all! ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT! President Warren G. Harding as the thin man was an incredible casting decision!I am now connecting my tongue to a 12 volt battery to punish myself for watching this!ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

New 2015 Horror / Thriller 'Altergeist" is pretty scary stuff. It starts off with a group of friends who get together to go to one of the most haunted places in the California...THE KINGS RANSOM WINERY. They go there to find out if its haunted...they find out more than they bargained for when they come across ghosts and several hauntings at the winery and turns into a survival fight...one of the guys takes a video camera with him to the winery for evidence, so I am like "Groan, not another found footage" but after 35-40 mins of warming up this little horror "Altergeist" really keeps you on the edge of your seat and scared to the end of the movie....what didn't work for me was that the main character (Woman) kept saying she was pregnant? where? she didn't look it, and towards the end before the car crash she said she was having convulsions and needed a hospital, then the car crashed and flipped, and she got out fine as anything and fought a guy and ran off....and she did plenty running after that....so that was not needed and didn't work for me...anyway good movie, on the edge of your seat thriller...worth a look!Also the music score was overdone. Every scene has overblaring music horror score. when the girl ran music overblaring, something spooky happened, music score over blaring..to be honest i thought it ruined the scenes sometimes with being overdone too much...still a good enjoyable movie overall

There are some decent ideas in this film, which makes it more of a shame that it's not very good.A straight-forward set-up is established in which a team of young paranormal investigators arrive at the somewhat original setting of a large, reputedly haunted, Californian wine-making estate with a history of bizarre suicides, in order to record footage for a TV show that they hope will win them a network contract.Sure enough they get more than they bargained for and find themselves in grave peril, but it turns out that there's more going on than a few malevolent spirits bumping off twenty-somethings in imaginative fashion. In fact there's both a nefarious threat very much of the earthly plane, and otherworldly forces that give the plot an unexpected dimension, at least genre-wise. There are other plot strands at play relating to these; probably too many in fact, and certainly too many to mention. Incredibly, despite all of this the film still feels predictable.The group of six paranormal investigators form three couples of sorts (one ostensibly a pair of childhood friends) who have varying relationship "issues". This is made explicit in an interwoven scene in which all three couples are bickering at once. Are they being influenced by sinister forces, inadvertently provoking said forces, or neither? I'm still not sure. This element, along with the general tone of the film, seems to be aimed squarely at a multiplex teen audience. That said, at times it feels as if the filmmakers are having fun with genre clichés, and might even have originally intended to set this up as a standard teen ghost flick in order to wow us with the aforementioned genre switch-up, but overall the tone remains cheesy and earnest throughout.Some will enjoy this as it has more going on than the average mainstream ghost story, but overall the familiar teen-horror tropes form an uneasy combination with the ambitious, and at times daft, plot.