Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.5
Overall		4.0

We Are Still Here Blu-ray Movie Review

Spiritual Awakening

Reviewed by Michael Reuben October 2, 2015

With his first feature, We Are Still Here (or "WASH"), writer/director Ted Geoghegan has shown that there's still plenty of life (or is it afterlife?) in familiar horror tropes. All it takes is imagination, hard work, a first-rate cast and the willingness to brave the frigid conditions of upstate New York, where Geoghegan and his company filmed WASH in the dead of winter. The environment added layers of free production value to a tale where desolation, both physical and emotional, are crucial elements of the story.

Geoghegan cut his demon's teeth as a writer or producer of such shockers as Sweatshop and The ABCs of Death 2. WASH began as a writing project for horror director Richard Griffin, but Geoghegan became so intrigued with the idea that he ended up taking it on himself, with the backing of independent production companies Snowfort Pictures (Starry Eyes) and MPI's Dark Sky Films. The main inspiration for the script was Lucio Fulci's The House by the Cemetery, but Geoghegan drew from numerous other sources, giving the material his own wicked spin. The result is the most original haunted house film in years, one that knows—and fulfills—every expectation of the genre, then goes them one better. As Geoghegan says in his commentary, it's OK to laugh at the movie. There are plenty of scares to compensate.

Although no date is initially flashed on the screen, it is not a spoiler to reveal that the year is 1979. If nothing else, the absence of cell phones establishes that WASH occurs before the 1990s. Geoghegan has said that he will never set a horror film in modern times, because mobile communications have ruined too many of the genre's classic conventions.

On a snowy and desolate highway, Paul and Anne Sacchetti are driving to their newly acquired house in the remote town of Aylesbury, Massachusetts. Paul bought the house from photographs, even though it was old and obviously decrepit, because it was dirt cheap. He wants to take Anne entirely away from their former life in the hope that she can begin to recover from the recent death of their son, Bobby, in a car accident. One look at Anne's face tells you that it will be a long recovery.

Anne Sacchetti is played by horror legend Barbara Crampton (Re-animator, From Beyond), and her husband Paul by Andrew Sensenig (Upstream Color). One of the deliberate strategies in WASH is to center the story on characters who are older and more secure in their view of the world than teens or twenty-somethings. When such characters are confronted with the supernatural and unexplainable, their reaction may not be as immediate, but it's deeper and more intense. Sure enough, when the Sacchettis reach their new home, everything about it looks creepy and off-putting, but Paul has paid extra to have the movers arrange their belongings, and the couple busies themselves with getting settled in their new home.

Naturally the place has problems, especially in the inexplicably hot basement, where a shadowy figure flickers in and out of sight whenever anyone ventures downstairs. A repairman called to solve the problem (Marvin Patterson) ends up badly injured by what the Sacchettis assume is an electrical fault (but we know better). Confirming the conventional wisdom that your problems follow you wherever you go, Anne tells her husband that she hears their dead son's voice speaking to her in the house. Despite Paul's misgivings, Anne invites her friend, May Lewis (Lisa Marie, Sleepy Hollow and Ed Wood), and May's stoner husband, Jacob (writer/director/actor Larry Fessenden, Beneath and Wendigo), for an extended visit. May is an amateur mystic and fortuneteller, and Anne hopes that her friend can "read" the house and tell them whether Bobby's spirit is truly there. May and Jacob will also bring their son, Harry (Michael Patrick Nicholson), who was Bobby Sachetti's friend, and Harry plans to bring his current girlfriend, Daniela (Kelsea Dakota). Thus does Geoghegan introduce a few youthful lambs to the slaughter, while keeping the focus on the grownups.

One of WASH's secret weapons and biggest surprises is venerable character actor Monte Markham, whose varied career dates back to TV's original Mission: Impossible. Looking younger than his 80 years (and, according to Geoghegan, displaying more energy than anyone on the set), Markham plays local Aylesbury citizen Dave McCabe, the essential character in horror films who warns the newcomers about the Terrible Things That Happened Here. On what is billed as a casual welcoming visit with his wife, Cat (Connie Neer), Dave relates to the Sacchettis that their house was originally a mortuary inhabited by the Dagmar family, who were run out of town after the locals discovered that Old Man Dagmar was burying empty coffins and selling the bodies for research and who knows what else. Watching Dave's fixed smile as he relates this story, the Sacchettis know there's something "off" about the fellow, but they attribute it to small town eccentricity. They shouldn't.

Events spiral rapidly out of control after the Lewises arrive, and just when you think Geoghegan has exhausted his bag of tropes, he pulls out something new and startling. Both the house and the town have an elaborate history, and an intricate montage behind the end credits is well worth studying, because it fills in many gaps in the spiritual mythology. Still, the ending is deliberately open-ended and ambiguous, but not because Geoghegan anticipates a sequel. He wants viewers to decide for themselves, and in his commentary he confesses that he takes an optimistic view, which he contrasts with the darkly pessimistic interpretation offered by one audience member after a festival screening. Either approach fits the film's events. Who knows what ghosts really want from the living?

Star Trek fans should watch for Susan Gibney, who played warp drive expert Dr. Leah Brahms on The Next Generation. Here, she appears as Maddie, a terrified local restaurant and bar owner, who is savvy enough to know that, when someone knocks insistently at your door after hours, you should send the new girl to answer.

We Are Still Here Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

We Are Still Here was shot digitally with a Red Dragon camera by Canadian cinematographer Karim Hussain (Antiviral and Hobo with a Shotgun). Post-production was completed digitally, and MPI Media's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray has presumably been sourced directly from digital files.

The Blu-ray image is excellent, establishing a distinctive visual contrast between the white drifts of snow surrounding the Dagmar house and the dark, and often deep black, interiors of the house itself, especially in the basement, where lights seem to extinguish themselves at just the wrong moment. The image is so sharply detailed that flakes of snow are routinely visible, either falling from above or blowing in the wind; director Geoghegan insists in his commentary that none of the snowflakes had to be added digitally, because the frigid conditions in upstate New York supplied all that was needed, including the nearby towns of Shortsville and Palmyra, which doubled for Aylesbury, MA. An occasional scene involves warmer colors, such as when the Sacchettis and Lewises visit Buffalo Bill's Restaurant and Tap Room, but for the most part, WASH features a drab and chilly palette consistent with its climate. When the action does heat up, the major change in color is red.

MPI has mastered WASH with a generous average bitrate of 29.99 Mbps, and the compression has been carefully done to preserve the clarity of the digital photography, even when the action gets fast and wild in the film's final act.

We Are Still Here Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The 5.1 sound design for WASH, encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA, draws on the classic horror tradition of using deep bass tones to signal the presence of something otherworldly, but it also uses subtle, quiet sounds that fade into the mix to suggest a spirit world that might just be friendly. The voice of Bobby Sacchetti that his mother believes she hears is just barely audible in the background; depending on the quality (and volume) of your setup, you may or may not hear it among the whispers, creaks, groans and other assorted supernatural murmurings that infect the Dagmar house. You will, however, hear an array of sounds more suitable to a slasher movie when things turn violent at various points in the film. Several gunshots are particularly loud.

The dialogue is always clear, and some of it is genuinely funny, especially when Larry Fessenden's Jacob is holding forth. The effective horror soundtrack is credited to Wojciech Golczewski (Late Phases), and it works all the better because of its contrast with several songs written by Wally Boudway and performed by his band, Wooden Indian.

As usual with MPI's releases, an alternate PCM 2.0 track is also included.

We Are Still Here Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary with Writer/Director Ted Geoghegan and Producer Travis Stevens: The director and producer provide a wealth of detail about the development of the project, casting, production logistics and shooting the film. They provide background on several intriguing plot points and illuminate the psychology of several characters. Geoghegan also points out numerous references to other horror films and discusses his overall approach to the genre. The commentary also explains the final shot following the credits, which is an inside joke.



• Behind the Scenes (1080p; 1.78:1; 7:04): Geoghegan and Stevens cover some of the same territory discussed in their commentary, but here their comments are accompanied by scenes of the cast and crew filming both inside the house and outdoors in the snow.



• Trailer (1080p; 2.39:1; 1:35): Like so many trailers, this one gives away too much in an effort to lure viewers to the theater.



• Teaser (1080p; 2.39:1; 1:39): Longer than the trailer, this gives away less (but still too much).



• Additional Trailers: At startup, the disc plays trailers for Redeemer, Para Elisa and Starry Eyes, which can be skipped with the chapter forward button and are not otherwise available once the disc loads.

We Are Still Here Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Having tried as best I can to avoid revealing what actually happens after Paul and Anne Sacchetti move into their new home, all I can really say is that anyone who has ever enjoyed a horror movie should give themselves the pleasure of watching We Are Still Here. My advice is to watch it with one or more fellow horror fans, and feel free to comment to each other on just how overtly the film ticks off the boxes on the "haunted house" checklist. (Someone actually leaves the new owners a note saying "Get out".) It's all deliberate and it's all a buildup. The payoff is worth it—and I doubt that any streamed version will look as good as this Blu-ray. Highly recommended.