Lost_Souls_Star An uncovered Gem! This is a great movie! The trailer sucked, and gave me the impression that it's a low-budget piece of crap with a great...no, AWESOME cast! Curious I got it...I was VERY surprised. Linda Park, (Hoshi from Enterprise) is in it, Marina Sirtis (Troi of Star Trek: TNG), Dean Haglund (Langly, of the Lone Gunmen from The X-files), the sexy Alexis Cruz from Stargate (the film & SG-1), and Tucker Smallwood who has been in so many movies and every major sci-fi TV show in the past decade! The movie had an intelligent story, and though it's called Spectres, it was more about a mother struggling to make life with her teen daughter as close to normal as possible after a suicide attempt. The supernatural aspect is a fresh view (which is rare) on the subject of hauntings. The best thing of all (and worth getting the DVD on its own) was the surprise goose-flesh-raising filming of an actual ghost during a take and can be seen in special features. This is indeed a GEM that needs to be uncovered.

jmcb I can say without doubt that this it my favourite film Marina Sirtis has been in (other than the Star Trek films of course)! I loved it. Excellent film-making too! A supernatural drama is how I would define this. Laura Lee and her daughter, Kelly (Lauren Birkell), go on a summer vacation to get to know each other again, after Kelly's attempted suicide. This would be a basic premise for a family drama but a supernatural twist is added to the plot. In the moment Kelly died before being revived, her spirit became lost and mixed up with Renee's (Linda Park's character) and Kelly takes on some of Renee's traits and attracts further spiritual attention (in other words ghosts). Marina displays some of her greatest acting skills to date, in my opinion. When the psychic Will (Tucker Smallwood) and psychiatrist Dr. Halsey (Dean Haglund) realise Kelly be brought to the brink of death and be revived to regain her spirit/soul, Laura Lee gets understandably extremely emotional and has to be held by Will. Marina does a fantastic job here; devastation and helplessness are obviously not enjoyable emotions to act (see quotes below for Marina talking about this scene). At certain points in the film Laura Lee is an awful mother, not at all understanding what her daughter is going through. But this must be because she cannot cope with her daughter's attempted suicide! And she is a bit of a b*tch towards Dr. Halsey, when she says, "I'm not the one on your couch, I'm paying you to make us a happy family." But it appears that the supernatural experiences that mother and daughter go through, aid them in bonding with each other by the film's conclusion. The ending is slightly cheesy, with Laura Lee and Kelly a happy family and going off to explore the creek, but I don't have a problem with that. Kelly, Dr. Halsey, Will and all the ghosts are all roles that are cast without flaws. It's always a pleasure to see Marina in anything, Spectres is fabulous though, a perfect project for Marina, and she gets nothing but praise from me for her performance.DVD Review: The actual film is faultless in quality, but the special features seem to be jumpy, the images jerk around and have lines on sometimes. But it's just a huge bonus to have special features, unlike Marina's other recent films on DVD, Terminal Error and Paradise Lost, which have none. It's lovely when the film company put effort in to it. This has deleted scenes, making of the film, trailers and a clip of filming where they thought the house they filmed in was haunted and something moves behind Marina. But it seems to be just a flash of light, even though the makers insist there was nothing that could produce that light! Oooh!

sol **SPOILERS** Even though the advertising for the movie "Spectres" makes it look like a ghost story it's a lot deeper and philosophical then you would have first expected it to be. The film is about two persons who become connected through death and how it in the end fulfills both of their wants and dreams that they couldn't have while they were still alive. Kelly Webber, Lauren Birkell, is very depressed over the loss of her dad at an early age and the loss of her mom Laura, Marina Sirtis, who never has time for her due to her job as a CPA at a large accountant firm in the city.As we see Kelly watering her front lawn at the beginning of the movie Linda, Renee Hansen, pull up with her van asking Kelly for directions to the local mall. Linda, together with her young son C.J ,Alexander Agate, seems to be a bit concerned with Kelly as if she could read her mind. Later that evening Linda get's killed in a car accident, her son C.J survived, and Kelly attempts to kill herself only to be brought back to life at the hospital.After recovering from her suicide attempt Mrs. Webber takes her teenage daughter Kelly to their summer home in the country to spend more time with her but just then things start to happen to both of them that are beyond the world of the living. At first thinking that Kelly is suffering from the aftermath of her suicide attempt Laura sends her to a psychiatrist Dr. Halsey, Dean Haglund. Dr. Halsey after examining her and seeing for himself what's happening to Kelly, and her mom back home, feels that whatever Kelly is suffering from is out of the realm of science and reality and goes to his friend Will Franklin, Tucker Smallwood, a psychic for help. It turns out that something strange and paranormal happened when both Kelly and Linda died,Kelly was resuscitated back to life,and it's that incident in death that somehow connected the two in life. "Spectres" is a lot like the famous James Stewart film "It's a Wonderful Life" in that it shows how precious one's life really is and, no matter how bad things are, throwing it away would not make things any better but make them much worse when one realizes what a mistake he, or she, made by doing that. You start to see, like Kelly does, what a waste it is when you give up the most precious gift that God gave you. At the same time you see through Linda, how after losing her life, how she took advantage of Kelly's mistake to make life better for her orphaned young son, C.J. Linda did this by getting Kelly to, sub-consciously, track down C.J and find his dad Sam Philips, Chris Hardwick; so that C.J can have someone to look after and care for him as he grows up into adulthood. The ending of the movie "Spectres" turns out to be a happy one for both Kelly and the deceased Linda with Linda's son C.J reunited with the father that he never knew. Kelly and her mom end up finally being together and spending more time with each other like they should have before the loneliness and void of being alone and unloved drove Kelly to kill herself at the beginning of the movie.

filmdoc-1 I was fortunate enough to get to see this film a couple weeks back at one of my favorite theaters (the Rialto in Pasadena) and the ambiance of the venue really added to my experience (the Rialto is a grand and spooky place - you can feel the ghosts that surely live there). My only wish is that more people turned out for I can only imagine how much fun it would be to see "Spectres" with a big audience.Having read about the movie in advance, I knew it was not going to be a horror film. Still, there were several moments in the movie made me jump and based on the reaction of the rest of the audience I was not alone. Also I was surprised at how funny the movie is. It's a good thing too because if this film had taken itself - or its philosophical/spiritual ideas - too seriously, it could have been a disaster. Instead, it wears its heart on its sleeve without shoving anything down your throat. And because the filmmakers don't violate the rules they've created in this world, you walk away at the end, maybe not believing, but thinking it'd be really cool if the ideas expressed were true.If people come to this film for any reason other than the supernatural elements, of course, they'll be coming for the cast of recognizable sci-fi veterans (so amazing to see David Hedison again - he looks FANTASTIC). It certainly is fun to see so many good actors playing against type. Still, it is the young actress who plays "Kelly" that steals the show. She IS the movie and that's no knock on the other performers, who all do really good work.Technically, the film is somewhat of a mixed bag in that there's some choppy camera work and the music is often that of a TV Movie. Some of the effects are cool, some are barely serviceable. According to the filmmakers, the movie was shot in high definition, and it has a really unique look to it that seems to fit the mood. Also, the sound effects and design do a lot to add to the spooky and emotionally haunting atmosphere.Still, technical flaws aside, this is clearly a modest-budgeted picture with huge ideas and an even bigger heart and as such I really hope it finds wide acclaim and success.