Ghost Storm (2011)
Nomination Year: 2015
SYNOPSIS: A hundred years ago, on a small island in the Pacific Northwest, a group of nutso religious cultists killed themselves. In the present day, four teenagers go to the island's cemetery to make out. While they're doing this, lightning strikes the mass suicide memorial. Not wanting to get struck my more lightening, they decide to leave, but first one of them goes off to pee against the mass suicide memorial and gets killed by fog-like ghosts, his body aged or desiccated or something.
The kids call the cops. Fortunately, the girlfriend of the dead boy is the chief's daughter, so the cops actually believe their story, which has to be a first for this kind of movie. The cops actually investigate and one of them gets killed by the ghosts, too. The sheriff, being unusually smart for the genre, calls the state police for help and they promise to send some investigators on tomorrow's ferry.
Meanwhile, the ghosts form a storm over the cemetery, attracting the attention of the local meteorologist, who happens to be the sheriff's ex-wife. She sends a weather balloon into the storm, but the ghosts short out the electronics and puncture it, then attack her. Fortunately for her, the speed of the ghosts is extremely plot-specifically variable and she's a main character, so she gets away. The ghost storm does send tendrils of mist to kill various townsfolk overnight, though.
The next day, a paranormal investigator (the Chief from Battlestar Galactica) arrives to tell everyone that the outside help will be useless and they'll have to defeat the ghosts themselves. He does not, however, offer much in the way of useful advice for doing so, although he does note that the evil spirits require a good spirit to coalesce around. The ferry arrives, but is attacked by the ghost storm before it can dock and everybody onboard is killed, prompting lots of the island's residents to try to flee on their boats, because clearly boats are a *great* place to be during a ghost storm. So much for people in this movie being unusually intelligent for horror movie characters.
The survivors flee back to town, where the Chief wanders off on his own to get killed. The townsfolk barricade themselves in various buildings and try to ghost-proof them, usually without success. The daughter goes to the church and finds an old diary that upends everything the townsfolk thought they knew about the suicide. Turns out it wasn't a suicide at all. The cultists were planning on sacrificing an altar boy from the church in some sort of evil ritual. The priest found out and tried to stop them. The altar boy was killed in the crossfire and the townsfolk killed all of the cultists. That must be the good spirit the ghosts are coalescing around!
Armed with this knowledge, the meteorologist re-analyzes the data from the weather balloon and finds the frequency of the altar boy. She then rigs a new weather balloon to amplify it and a wire to ground out the ghosts, trapping them in the ground once more. Meteorology FTW! Or was that WTF?
The kids call the cops. Fortunately, the girlfriend of the dead boy is the chief's daughter, so the cops actually believe their story, which has to be a first for this kind of movie. The cops actually investigate and one of them gets killed by the ghosts, too. The sheriff, being unusually smart for the genre, calls the state police for help and they promise to send some investigators on tomorrow's ferry.
Meanwhile, the ghosts form a storm over the cemetery, attracting the attention of the local meteorologist, who happens to be the sheriff's ex-wife. She sends a weather balloon into the storm, but the ghosts short out the electronics and puncture it, then attack her. Fortunately for her, the speed of the ghosts is extremely plot-specifically variable and she's a main character, so she gets away. The ghost storm does send tendrils of mist to kill various townsfolk overnight, though.
The next day, a paranormal investigator (the Chief from Battlestar Galactica) arrives to tell everyone that the outside help will be useless and they'll have to defeat the ghosts themselves. He does not, however, offer much in the way of useful advice for doing so, although he does note that the evil spirits require a good spirit to coalesce around. The ferry arrives, but is attacked by the ghost storm before it can dock and everybody onboard is killed, prompting lots of the island's residents to try to flee on their boats, because clearly boats are a *great* place to be during a ghost storm. So much for people in this movie being unusually intelligent for horror movie characters.
The survivors flee back to town, where the Chief wanders off on his own to get killed. The townsfolk barricade themselves in various buildings and try to ghost-proof them, usually without success. The daughter goes to the church and finds an old diary that upends everything the townsfolk thought they knew about the suicide. Turns out it wasn't a suicide at all. The cultists were planning on sacrificing an altar boy from the church in some sort of evil ritual. The priest found out and tried to stop them. The altar boy was killed in the crossfire and the townsfolk killed all of the cultists. That must be the good spirit the ghosts are coalescing around!
Armed with this knowledge, the meteorologist re-analyzes the data from the weather balloon and finds the frequency of the altar boy. She then rigs a new weather balloon to amplify it and a wire to ground out the ghosts, trapping them in the ground once more. Meteorology FTW! Or was that WTF?
Greg Pearson
