A young widow moves into an old house on Lake Erie to recover from the sudden loss of her husband; however, she soon discovers a dark secret and that she is not alone.
Where oh where do I begin? Lake Eerie is a B-grade horror movie that describes itself as an homage to the classic horrors of the 90’s. It follows the story of a young widow that moves into a old house after the passing of her husband. The house tuns out to be (GASP!) haunted and with a little help from a nosey neighbour and her niece, our protagonist attempts to unravel the mystery.
A little research on the film led me to find out that it was in fact filmed in an “actual” haunted house. I managed to grab this from the movie’s website:
We shot Lake Eerie in an old lake house that is actually HAUNTED! We hired 3 teams of ghost hunters who captured proof that the house is in fact haunted, and we have behind the scenes footage from production coming soon! For future updates on the project…
The haunted lake house was built in 1918, and still has all of the original furniture from the 1920’s. It is like going back in time when walking in the house. It is believed that there are multiple ghosts residing there.
Whether you consider that a pretty sweet idea or nothing more than a gimmick, it had no effect on the actual hauntingness of the movie. To be fair to the movie, it does have it’s moments. It is genuinely scary for the first forty minutes or so; there was a great ambiance and it was mysterious and creepy in that 90’s kinda way. This unfortunately only lasts until about midway though the film. As the movie’s somewhat rustic charm begins to wear off, a number of issues come to light.
The score is like something out of the late 80’s or early 90’s, and the script and acting are reminiscent of soft-core porn; think Red Shoe Diaries or Emmanuelle. Even the telephones in the movie are rotary dial phones. The editing included random, rapid flashing images of weird fish statues and clocks and other various objects that weird either trying to scare me or induce an epileptic fit.
There were huge, gaping plot holes that I’m sure must have been addressed at some point by the cast and crew but were somehow just shrugged off or ignored. Our heroine also had excruciatingly unrealistic reactions to obviously life threatening situations. After seeing a hooded figure standing in her house, right before her eyes, our brave widow runs (jogs) down the stairs, grabs a knife and roofies herself the fuck out…
As you’ve probably predicted, the film ended terribly. Utterly confusing and unexplained, but with so many plot holes I really didn’t expect much of a conclusion. I’m sure it made sense to someone.
