Film Review: The Shadow People (2017)

SYNOPSIS:

Newlyweds Megan and Andrew  have just moved into their dream home with aspirations to start a family. But soon strange events start happening. Voices and shadowy figures haunt Megan, and even Andrew, starts questioning his own sanity as their marriage is being torn apart.

 REVIEW:

The Shadow People  is a new film from Producer/Director  Brian T. Jaynes.  He is also known for Biohazard: Patient Zero (2012), Humans vs Zombies (2011) and Boggy Creek (2010).

Megan (Kat Steffens) and Andrew (Bug Hall) are newly married and have just moved into their dream house in Texas.  In a new town, they decide to go to the local fair and are driving home on a rainy night. Megan sees a figure in the road and when Andrew swerves to avoid hitting it, their car gets stuck in the mud and they have to walk home. It rains a lot in this movie. In fact, it seems like it never stops raining and it’s a good thing that I paid so much attention to the weather, because it becomes relevant to the story. Andrew is a writer and Megan is an artist and they are a cute couple, although the chemistry between them is slightly awkward at times. As they begin unpacking boxes in the new house, Megan starts to feel like they aren’t alone. She hears whispers and sees shapes out of the corner of her eye. She mentions that she is wearing her favorite necklace several times and tells Andrew that it is supposed to guard against evil spirits.

When Megan is alone in the attic going through boxes, she finds a strange picture she drew as a child, and is startled to see a figure looking back at her through a mirror. She screams and tells Andrew that someone is in the house with them. As the days go by, Megan increasingly feels like she is being attacked by people she only catches a glimpse of, but Andrew hasn’t seen anything out of the ordinary. Megan even develops strange injuries and a fever and Andrew starts to question her sanity. He tells her she is just tired or that maybe the bad weather is affecting her. He also keeps telling her they should get out of the house, but she refuses to leave. Andrew sets up his office and organizes a studio for Megan, but they are both distracted are unable to do any work.

As much as I wanted to like the characters in this film, the same scenarios kept repeating and by the middle of the movie, it felt a bit stale. Fortunately, the story redeems itself later. Megan is caught in a mysterious fire in the garage and loses her special necklace and this seems to cause the activity she’s been experiencing to intensify. Megan’s mood changes dramatically and she is calm one minute and hysterical the next and she continues to be tormented by strange people that only she can see. Megan finally realizes that the people she has been seeing in the house are spirits. I understand this is a low budget film, but I felt like the special effects, especially the ‘ghosts’, could have been more interesting.

She shows Andrew the picture she drew as a child that she found earlier and tells him a story about her grandfather. Megan and her grandfather both used to see what they called shadow people when she was a child. Her grandfather told her he believed he was going to die soon and they were coming for him. She thinks that she is seeing shadow people now and that it means she is going to die. Andrew isn’t convinced of the existence of the shadow people until they both begin seeing a priest who calls himself Kaine (C. Thomas Howell). In my opinion, C. Thomas Howell makes any movie more entertaining and I wish the character of Kaine could have been featured more in this film.  Kaine arrives just in time to make almost everything in the movie make sense.

If you don’t like being left hanging at the end of a film, you will love this movie. Ultimately, everything is explained and the film has a nice, tidy ending. I would have definitely enjoyed the movie more if the story hadn’t lagged in the middle.

The Shadow People (2017)  –  2 out of 5 Skulls