Macabre…ish Horror Review: A Town Full of Ghosts
A Town Full of Ghosts, 2022/ 1 hr 7 min.
A couple, Mark (Andrew C. Fisher) and Jenna (Mandy Lee Rubio), who are also content creators, purchase a ghost town called Blackwood Falls Town. They plan to turn it into a family friendly western themed destination location complete with shopping and a hotel. This place is remote, 3 hours from the nearest town with a gas station or help, no cell service and so far, no water or electricity either. Frankly, Jenna doesn’t seem excited about it.
The town has a church, post office, an outdoor theatre, undertaker, saloon etc. One of the weirdest things about this place is a fence maze.
In one of the buildings they’ve set up lodging for themselves, kind of like camping indoors. But that night, weird things start to happen, Mark is woken up by noises and he smells burning wood. He sets up a camera to record while they sleep and it records someone in a rocking chair nearby.
The next day, they await an investor’s arrival and while they wait, his cousin Justin (Ali Alkhafaji) and his girlfriend, Lisa (Lauren Lox) shows up. Justin also has his camera equipment so Mark can get some high quality footage for his channel, he’s there to record everything.
That night, they hear piano music at 3 am, at first Mark think it’s Justin messing with him but no, it’s coming from the saloon. As soon as they step inside, the music stops and on one of the tables sits a shot of alcohol. And Mark, a recovering alcoholic, drinks it, then returns to his quarters.
Jenna is having more and more reservations about this place since Mark completed the sale. Justin is curious about how Jenna feels about living here and she admits to hating it. Meanwhile, Mark is so obsessed with the place that she doesn’t recognize him. She confesses to Justin that they no longer have a home to return too, outside of this place.
When the investor (Mike Dell) arrives, the deal quickly falls apart. This place is not quite the ghost town Mark sold to him, there are no utilities and some of the buildings aren’t even real. He’s disappointed, pulls the funding and leaves. Justin, who filmed the meeting is concerned and Mark confesses to Lisa that they have nothing left and wonders if her family can invest. Jenna’s distraught and over this whole thing once Mark confesses that they have nothing left, not even savings.
The groundskeeper, Billy (Keekee Suki), that Mark hired knows more about this place than he does and points him to a storage room with photos, maps and film reels. They set up a reel to reel projector and watch the history of the town.
A brothel owner loses everything when her brothel is burned to the ground, with her girls inside, when the towns people decide they are witches. The Madam (Sarah Froelich) survived and was horribly burned disfigured, in her despair, she murdered everyone in town with an axe. The bodies were supposedly buried in a mass grave and Mark thinks it’s under the maze.
Mark gets Justin to agree to fly his drone over the maze at 2 am while he walks through it. While piloting the drone, Justin can see someone in the maze and warns Mark but their coms lose signal. Mark is attacked by something but he says nothing happened when Justin asks about it. He says he saw someone in the maze with him but Mark rebuffs him and is acting stranger than normal.
The next day, Lisa and Mark are gone and so is Justin’s car. They find Mark drinking in the saloon with Billy. Jenna just wants to leave, she thinks she’s in danger, Mark tosses the keys and informs her no one is leaving this town. At this point, Mark is completely changed and Justin and Jenna make a plan to escape.
Meanwhile, Mark is still making and posting videos and he is recording when he follows a trail of blood and shows a now deceased Lisa in the back of Justin’s vehicle, he retrieves the axe and returns to Blackwood.
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In the church, Mark has his wife tied up and Justin is leaned against the wall, he’s been struck in the head and appears dead. Mark confronts her and he’s recording all of it. Suddenly, Justin is on his feet. It distracts Mark just long enough for his wife to escape. He chases her through the maze and as she runs for her life, she sees things that don’t make any sense, people are in there, some are dead, including her own dead body.
This film is written and directed by Isaac Rodriguez. He is the directed of a few indie POV/Shaky cam horror films such as Mister Creep, Deadware and Last Radio Call.