825 Forest Road
It was an offer too good to be true for Chuck and Maria Wilson, the townhouse sold on the promise of twice the space for the same price as the previous property they viewed, enough room for Chuck’s younger sister Isabel, about to begin her scholarship for an art degree and perfectly located for him to teach music at the local college next semester, a new start for them all in Ashland Falls with the trauma of the past left behind them, only Maria having to occasionally commute back to the city.
The first storm bringing rain dripping into every room below, it turns out realtor Bonnie’s smiling promises may not have been all they seem, the house on Rose Lane not in fact having had the roof recently replaced and the reason for the discounted price it has been on the market for three years since the suicide of the previous owner, the latest in a long history of such deaths locally which the townsfolk believe is the legacy of Helen Foster, the wronged woman who lived at 825 Forest Road eighty years before.
From the writer and director of the Hell House LLC sequence, the fifth of which is currently in post-production, Stephen Cognetti moves to the suburbs with 825 Forest Road, a film told in turn from the different points of view of the three surviving members of the Wilson family, Chuck (Joe Falcone), his wife Maria (Elizabeth Vermilyea) and Isabel (Kathryn Miller), with Lorenzo Beronilla and Darin F Earl II providing backstory and exposition as neighbour Larry and classmate Luke.
Rather than Rashomon or Copenghagen with different interpretations of shared experiences or even the events themselves in a state of flux, all 825 Forest Road offers is different camera angles as the stories intersect and repeat scenes, a needless contrivance when a linear approach would have made the whole experience blessedly shorter as the gentrified former coal town shivers under the dread shroud of Helen Foster, her spirit held responsible for “the town council tragedy” in the bygone year of 1980.
825 Forest Road not an address of subtle shade or shifting mood, foreshadowing taking the form of surly characters making announcements and not one scene complete without rumbling upstairs or banging on doors, apparitions walking through the frame or glimpsed in mirrors, spooky mannequins shifting their limbs or visits from the dead to either play Chuck’s piano or chastise housekeeping standards, Isabel’s particular torment the ghost which repeatedly turns on lights while she’s trying to sleep.
The performances hampered by the flat premise and dialogue, executed without any spark of novelty and the final twist obvious to all but those actually seeking the cursed 825 Forest Road, its location lost after the town borders were redrawn in 1953, where the similarly themed SurrealEstate in contrast offers similar square footage with verve and wit on a weekly basis there should be no justification for the harassment of a dysfunctional family in a haunted house to be so persistently dull, yet somehow it is.
825 Forest Road will be available on Shudder from Friday 4th April
