Spookt

Truth be told there aren’t that many horror or scary movies that actually scare that much in the sense of heightening the senses to fraying point. Jumps and cold hard violence have little or no build ups and hen just release the viewer. Spookt for a good part of its duration does grind the senses.

Rachel (Christen Sharice) is an online professional spook debunker using cold had facts and logic. She’s dismissed by some but the town of Greenville, Pennsylvania has caught her interest and in particular the ‘Gibson House’ where a girl called Flora disappeared and was the home of a strange doctor. On arriving at the house she’s greeted by Mr Machen (Keith Brooks) in a dress and that there is another investigator there. Claire (Haley Leary) however is a local more open minded and has been monitoring Rachel’s show so knows something about her and what drives her. It’s a frosty meeting with Rachel soon on the attack.

It’s a classic set up which both actors make the best of with some choice lines and banter with some background too. Separating for the night, Rachel sees a figure from a painting in the local museum on her drive to the motel where she also finds a sort of Amish doll (no face) that she had found and discarded earlier in the film.

Staying at the house Claire casts a salt circle for protection but that doesn’t stop an entity from paralysing her. That’s after a nerve shredding sequence of Claire going around the house convinced she had seen Flora. Dripped into the story is Flora’s mother Anne (Erin Brown) and the presence or not of Dr Byler (Eric Roberts). As things start to get weirder with discoveries in the house, Rachel and Claire begin to appreciate each other’s stands.

Apart from the very effective, dense and creepy atmosphere that director Tony Reames and writer Torey Haas create the core of the film is the steady bonding between Rachel and Claire.

These are first class performances from Leary and Sharice and the viewer does feel that this is genuine. A curiosity about each other that eventually leads to an element of dependency as things start to escalate in the third act.

This last third does fall into more typical horror tropes and some of the overwhelming dread of the earlier scenes is put aside. But it doesn’t look lazy or padded and really a minor flaw with it not looking totally out of place.

Spookt had its world premiere at London FrightFest 2023.