After the tragic death of their son Anne and Paul Sacchetti seek solace in New England country home , where they discover that their is a presence in their home. Could it be the ghost of their dead son, or something more malevolent? (Don’t travel any further Horror Fans…. SPOILERS below.)

We Are Still Here was written and directed by Ted Geoghegan in his directorial debut. With a good mix of chills and gore, the film tries very hard to be something it’s not. The film’s atmosphere and visuals are all very well presented but it’s let down by it’s middle aged cast and poor script. I fear that Geoghegan may have got a little ahead of himself, trying to blend a psychological thriller and all out splatter film, but falling very short. The story, though sporadic, is something I really wanted to the film to explore more of. I wanted to know more about the ghosts and less about everyone else, but it never happened. 

My main issue with this film is it’s inconsistency throughout. There seems to have been a of things thrown together here with little thought to how it would fit in with the story.  There are a couple of murders of local town people, that just make no sense what so ever, the worst offence here being the murder of a young waitress who’s crime was to open a door. Mysterious Dave McCabe and his wife shoot her off screen when they come knocking a local restaurants front door. Why did he shoot her? It’s not really explained. You, see Dave is trying to save the town from being massacred by the evil spirits in the house, so why he goes around killing towns people is anyone guess?

The spooky apparition that haunt the film are the Dagmars, a family of three who were burned alive by the local towns folk many years ago. Lassander Dagmar was a Morticians in a quite New England countryside town. When accusation started that Lassander was burying empty caskets and selling the body parts. The towns folk retorted by burning the funeral home to the ground, with the Dagmar’s inside. Now, this is not really told in the film, this is the story i’ve managed to build from little bits of info throughout the film. The Dagmars are burnt to a crisp, with white eyes and emotionless faces. They remind me a lot of the Lepers from the original version of “The Fog” , making the design choice of the Dagmars somewhat unoriginal. They live in the basement, in a hole in the wall, which the film loves to keep reminded us. Some of the most prominent images I have of this films is the slow pans on this hole. For some unexplained reason, they appear every 30 years and the local towns folk “feed” them a new family to keep the quite. Other wise, they kill cows and turn rivers red. Really awful stuff like that.

The spirits powers are real mess, changing from one scene to another. There does not really seem to be any logic to it, just what ever the directed thought would be most effective at the time. When they touch you,  you end up burnt. But they also melt through floors and posses people. You have one moment when the spirits kill someone with a scene ripped right out of Terminator 3. A girl named Daniella is escaping the haunted house in a car. Driving fast along a road, a fist is suddenly thrust through her chest. How did the spirits escape the boundaries of the house? Why is this the ONLY example of them travelling away from their home? Answers on post cards please…

Look, ill admit it, this film is creepy. I even jumped once or twice, which is a rare thing indeed, but it’s not a very good horror. It’s slow burning, confused and poorly executed. The cast is laughable and the creatures unoriginal. I like a film to have some sense pride in itself, but We Are Still Here is so poorly concepted, that it just feel unloved. The inclusion of newspaper clippings at the end credits solidifies this. Here we have a wealth of information and history that,  I can only conclude,  was tacked on at the end in the hope of making the plot make sense.

We Are Still Here is a mediocre affair with some nice cinematography and lost of gore. It just suffers from a lack of vision and a decent cast.