Leofwine_draca CASSADAGA is a movie that tries to have it all but ends up coming away with nothing. It starts out as a traditional ghost story with a deaf girl losing her little sister in a car accident and afterwards finding herself haunted by the spirit of a disturbed spirit. About halfway through it veers off into needless torture porn territory and becomes much, much worse.CASSADAGA has a good sense of creeping dread going for it but that's about all it does have. It lets the lead character be defined by her disability because without that she'd be a totally forgettable and uninteresting person. It doesn't help that the supporting cast are entirely bland in themselves and will quickly disappear from memory once off the screen.The ghostly elements of the film, although predictable, are better handled than the shoddy torture scenes of the most routine serial killer imaginable going about his business trying to make life-life puppets from dead people. It's needlessly unpleasant, and helps sink the whole project. The expected chase scenes between killer and 'final girl' are as routinely staged as possible and the whole film has a familiar Hollywood vibe to it despite it being an independent production.

salsiga-713-60558 Mix of serial killer mystery and revengeful ghost that doesn't really work.Bad dialog, wandering script, unnecessary drama, characters that seem relevant disappear half way through the movie to not come back, sub-plots not closed, predictable double end, bad guy is easily spotted at the moment he shows up on screen, deafness of the main character largely unexplored and unused, and so on... Looks like the movie was half-backed when they started shooting so the final product feels like needed much more thought and work in many levels. As it is, is just barely entertaining.Some good things like the two main plot lines coming actively together for the ending or the interesting and creepy idea of the human marionettes don't make up for the rest. Watch only if you don't have anything else near you and do so with very low expectations. 4 stars for the effort and some good moments here and there.

Rich Wright My kingdom for a half decent horror film! Thinking that I'd cleanse my mind of the initially promising but ultimately abysmal Lovely Molly, I immediately skipped to this one... Only to find it was just the same! A young lad cuts his pecker off in the introduction because he wants to be a girl, and the deaf woman's sister gets herself mown down on the road, and the stage is all set for no-hards-barred gore fun... But NNOOO!!Instead we have to tolerate the cutesy-poo relationship between the hearing impaired lady, one of her sickly-sweet pupils and this schoolgirl's seemingly perfect father, who might as well have Generic Love Interest tattooed on the back of his head. Oh, and his break off of their relationship two-thirds of the way through and his reasons for doing it are utterly nonsensical. Couldn't they pay him enough to stay for the entire film? Same with the uniquely voiced Louise Fletcher, who disappears without a trace too with no explanation. You think we should form a search party?Aside from that, we get sub-standard Sixth Sense style scares, a LOT of running about with no clear motive in mind, and of course the main draw... Girls being abducted and turned into human mannequins. It sounds like fun, and it is... But after a few short interludes of this, its back to the mind numbingly tedious main story, with the hopelessly convoluted antics and CRINGE CRINGE CRINGE dialogue. In fact, it got so painful at times, I wished I was as mutton as the heroine. And if you don't know what I mean, learn to speak Cockney. You Philistine.

reedijkp The makers had a great concept, but sadly failed to really go anywhere with it. It could have been a cool, sick horror movie, but the truly disturbing part of the story (which is also what the movie is advertised for) completely stays in the background. We hardly get to know or see anything about the killer and his work and thus are left with many unanswered questions, most importantly: his entire background story is hardly worked out. But also, for a character this sadistic he chooses a very unimaginative way of actually killing his victims.The side story about Lily being haunted is completely superfluous and adds nothing to the movie, but it takes a lot of time and attention away from what should have been the actual storyline. To top it off, the movie derails even more in the end with an utterly inept cop and other ridiculous twists that the writers clearly needed to bring the movie to its end.Had they focused on what this movie should have been about - a psychopath serial killer turning his victims into marionettes - it could have been great, but in stead we got a fairly bland ghost movie with a twist. It sucks that this concept is now ruined for future movies, because there was great potential there. But Cassadaga failed to deliver in all aspects.