We Are Still Here

Ted Geoghegan – 2015 – USA

I quite enjoyed We Are Still Here because somehow it assures you – through little more than its lack of pretension and obvious affection for classic horror stories – that it is not just another in a long, weary parade of cheap supernatural jolters, and that it has something to offer even though it isn’t necessarily re-writing the book on haunted house movies.  Set vaguely in upstate New York vaguely in the late 70s, it tells the story of a middle-aged husband and wife moving into a new house in the countryside in the hopes of getting over the recent death of their college-aged son.  Almost as soon as they arrive, eerie manifestations begin to occur, and the wife is quick to assume that their son’s spirit has followed them into their new home.  We quickly, learn, however, that the house was previously inhabited by a family who were persecuted by their fellow townspeople, that their ghosts are still captive in the house, and that the house itself may have an agenda all its own.  The movie is cheap-looking, and that’s what I like about it.  The actors are slightly second-rate and all the more interesting for it; like the décor and special effects, the performances are more genuinely “70s” than most self-consciously retro films.  I was particularly interested in the make-up effects.  They reminded me of The Fog (1980), where the ghosts were slimy and waterlogged; here they also bear the injuries of their deaths, in this case burning.  Like many of the best horror films, We Are Still Here – despite its key supernatural element – affirms that we have much more to fear from the world of the living than the dead.