New Indie Horror Movie entitled ‘Dead Story’ [Review]

On Jan. 20, STIF Entertainment will release the new indie horror movie Dead Story. This film comes from first time writer/director Suneel Tripuraneni. Leading up to the release, Tripuraneni and his team were diligent with their grassroots marketing. The result has been respectable YouTube views for the trailer and a certain amount of buzz. Unfortunately, though there are some interesting and effective elements to the film the trailer covers most of them.

Dead Story follows a married couple as they move into a country house. The wife (Anne), who is a photographer, works from home. Meanwhile, the somewhat unlikable husband (Harold) has an office job that keeps him away long hours. The other primary living character is Harold’s mother – who seems to be an all around awful human being. In fact, this character turns out to be scarier than the ghost. This is a testament to the actress, Sheril Rodgers, who turned in the best performance in this movie. Triperaneni took on a challenge here as it is difficult to drive a picture in which there is only one character to root for.

As the movie progresses, Anne begins to encounter a ghost. There are two things about the relationship between them that captures audience attention. First, Anne quickly thinks to try and photograph the incidents. This is something usually reserved for ghost hunters in similar flicks. Second, Anne repeatedly has extended and direct contact with the ghost, which is an interesting choice.

A blend of interesting and obvious from Dead Story

Unfortunately, despite some interesting elements, much of the movie is easy to anticipate: The ghost figure is clad identically to many others; Anne trips and falls when being chased; Anne does not bother waking her husband when things happen and so on. There is quite a bit of over acting throughout the movie, which lends itself to the overall obvious feel. Additionally, there are large spans of little activity that neither build suspense nor advance the plot, while fade-outs happen inexplicably in the middle of scenes.

Audiences who like their horror campy will enjoy this movie. It is a good date night flick if viewers do not want to be too scared. Devoted horror fans that tend more toward the serious, disturbing, or suspenseful will probably be less impressed with Dead Story. Overall, this is a fine watch, but not revolutionary.