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Ghosts, busted

Are those bumps in the night, creaky floors or demonic eyes staring through the windows random acts of coincidental nature, easily explained through logic and reason? Or could they be something more, something from, perhaps, beyond our realm of scientific knowledge? Chances are the plumbing is just bad. But, still, Oklahoma is one of the […]

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Haunting words

Ghost-Writer is an old-fashioned play about creativity and romance with a paranormal twist. Set in New York in 1919, the story centers on a love triangle between a recently deceased author, Franklin Woolsey; his widow, Vivian; and Myra Babbage, the typist Woolsey dictated his novels to in life, who transcribes Woolsey’s words in death. The […]

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Motley ghoul

Recently released digitally and on demand, Ghost Team One is a spirited spoof. BY ROD LOTT With this Halloween season being the first without a new chapter in the Paranormal Activity series, perhaps a Paranormal Activity spoof is the next best thing. There’s no shortage of them, but of the roughly half-dozen I’ve seen, Ghost […]

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Beautiful Creatures

Set in a South Carolina small town where the drawls are Okie-thick, the film follows Lena (New Zealand newcomer Alice Englert) as she nears her all-important sweet 16th. Because she is a member of the Ravenwood family of witches and warlocks — they prefer the term “casters” — that birthday is when she finds out […]

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Dark Skies

The first sci-fi-heavy effort from Blumhouse Productions, that mighty machine of menace that brought you the Paranormal Activity pictures, the film focuses on the Barrett family. Lacy (Keri Russell, TV’s The Americans) is a Realtor; Daniel (Josh Hamilton, J. Edgar) is an architect, but currently unemployed in the midst of the Great Recession. Because of […]

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The Pact

Following the death of her mother, an independent-minded waitress named Annie (Caity Lotz, TV’s Death Valley) returns with dogged reluctance to her childhood home — and that’s before her sister (Agnes Bruckner, Kill Theory) and friend (Kathleen Rose Perkins, TV’s Episodes) have vanished there. As made perfectly clear by the cover art, a malevolent force […]

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Supernatural Activity

The gist is that for its season/series finale, one of those ridiculous ghost-hunting shows goes to Hicksville, Texas, in search of the “yeti-demon” known as Smallsquatch. To give you an immediate idea of the level of humor the flick operates, the creature tickles its victims to death. Ha-ha! I mean, ha-ha? This flimsy setup allows […]

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Chernobyl Diaries

From the mind of Paranormal Activity maestro Oren Peli and first-time director Bradley Parker, the film follows six 20-somethings (including former boy bander Jesse McCartney) taking an “extreme tour” of the town of Pripyat, abandoned since the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster of 1986. They’re not supposed to be there, but it wouldn’t be extreme if […]

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