Find Me (2014)

It has nothing new and full of cliches that fall flat. Disappointment!

Tim (Cameron Bender) and Emily (Kathryn Lyn) get a good deal on an empty home as Emily returns to her hometown. Even before the ghost appears Emily has bad dreams. She feels connected to the ghost. Tim loves ghost movies and makes allusions to several of them in the film. Meanwhile her childhood friend Claire (Rachelle Dimaria) tries to help out. And what was that book she had? "Seance For Dummies?"Tim gives us sage advice, "Learn to live with it, figure out how to get rid of it, or move.""Find Me" is a ghost film that I didn't find scary. While things get moved around and appeared, our characters didn't get creeped out as it was just another day living with a ghost...except for maybe that one thing or two.About an hour into the film, you get an explanation if you haven't figured it out from the meager clues. The ending seems to have a twist, but it is a nicely written one in that it is really left up to the viewer to decide if there was a twist or not.Worth a view for ghost film fans.Parental Guide: F-bomb. brief sex. No nudity.

Oh man. It's not very often that I watch a movie that seems to have NO redeemable qualities… but sometimes it happens. I was flipping through Hulu one night recently and came across Find Me, director Andy Palmer's full-length film debut. I love checking out directors' and actors' debuts — it's not uncommon to find awesome gems that way — but oof, this wasn't one of those times.It starts off by giving us a dark flashback to Emily's (Kathryn Lyn) childhood, which is… mildly creepy at best. Fast forward to present time and Emily and her husband Tim (Cameron Bender) are moving into their first home, which is a stone's throw from the town Emily grew up in. Weird things start happening in the house and, somewhat uniquely, they assume right off the bat that it's a spirit. Oh, okay. So then begins a series of odd happenings, most of which conveniently happening while Tim is off at work, and yet Emily seems barely spooked by any damn thing.There's lots of scenes and aspects in the movie that are meant to be creepy but just played as cheesy to me (the music box, the spirit writing "find me" in the fog on the bathroom mirror, the seance that their friend Claire attempts which was just downright funny), and then some that really warranted more attention (like the ghost of her twin just straight up having sex with the husband and that is NEVER addressed beyond him saying "I just saw the f**ing ghost"!?!!?).The fact that Emily is SO quick to assume their house is haunted, but not to assume it might be connected to the disappearance and death of her twin seems pretty inconsistent to me. Also, I know not everyone is as forthright as me, but you wouldn't tell your husband at SOME point in your relationship that you had an identical twin sister who went missing when you were a kid? I really NEVER buy it when this is done in movies.Then we start actually SEEING the twin and… yikes. Those scenes are painful to say the least. I mean, since she went missing as a child, we couldn't have a ghost who looks like a child? Nope, we've got a fully grown woman wearing a little dress and pigtails. And then the ending is the most predictable thing ever predicted. Just… save your time and go watch something, ANYthing, else!

It's winter in the American Mid West. A young newly married couple, the husband a teacher with a new job at the local school, the wife unemployed, move into their newly purchased first house in the wife's home town. Almost immediately things start to go bump in the night. That suggests a pace the film doesn't have. It's a melancholy, bleak, almost artsy ghost story with shots of empty winter scenery, open skies and dripping icicles. The characters are well played, likable and intelligent, the horror mostly peripheral and special effects sparingly used. There are some genuine unforeseen twists in the plot. It's not a classic of the genre but, considering how bad many films in the genre are, I found it difficult to dislike. Nothing to write home about but, if you don't go in expecting a CGI filled gore fest, it has a bleak charm. 6/10.