Cassadaga (2011)

Directed by: Anthony DiBlasi
Produced by: Scott Poiley, Bruce Wood
Writen by: Scott Poiley, Bruce Wood
Starring: Kelen Coleman, Kevin Alejandro, Louise Fletcher, Amy
LoCicero, Rus Blackwell, Sarah Sculco
Music by: Dani Donadi
Editing by: Kristian Otero
Rated: R
Release Date: October 22, 2011
Budget: <1 Million
Gross: $1,678
Runtime: 113 minutes
Distributed by: Poiley Wood Entertainment, Cassadage Film Production
Country: United States
Trailer:

Synopsis:

After her sister’s untimely death, Lily goes to Cassadaga University to carry on her work as an artist, as well as teach young children. On a full scholarship and a place to live, Lily, now completely alone as her mother died some years ago of cancer, is coping with the loss of her family.

Lily soon meets Mike, the divorced father of one of her students. The two hit it off, and Lily agrees to go and meet some of Mike’s friends. They drink, they laugh, and conversation soon turns to the fact that Cassadaga is well known for its psychic mediums. As a joke, the group decides to go and meet one of the best known psychic mediums where Lily puts herself forward to do a séance in hopes of communicating with her deceased sister. Although successful, one problem occurs – a rancorous spirit makes itself known, and Lily soon becomes plagued by visions and agony.

At the same time all this is going on, Lily and Mike become suspicious about the vanishing of a previous tenant from Lily’s home, who inexplicably went missing. Lily’s neighbor Thomas, whose grandmother owns the university and gave her the property she lives in, is the main suspect. He’s introvert, and anyone that’s seen a horror film knows that the introvert either did something wrong, or is at least the first to be accused.

Critical Response:

Anthony DiBlasi’s Cassadaga is a modern day horror-thriller film combining supernatural elements of horror with the mystery of a crime thriller. The film is a ghost story as well as a murder mystery. Bruce Wood and Scott Poiley generated an out of the ordinary protagonist in Lily who has enough power to make the watchers care about her outcome. Lily carries the weight of the movie handling the varied situations in which she’s placed and through such constructing an emphatic, believable and three-dimensional protagonist. Her scenes with Sarah Sculco’s Michelle are the most bona fide in the film. At times dialogue seems a little deviant as well as the pacing which could have been tightened. Cassadaga does not build tension effectively enough making the initial scene, haunting, and serial killer climax fall flat.

The marionette sequences are the most successful in the film. There is mustiness in the surroundings of Geppetto which seems to work well. Art direction and effects are predominantly successful in these scenes causing remarkable images.

The music initially is a little annoying, creating tension and suspense when it is not really needed, especially at the beginning of the film.

Themes of deliverance infuse, as do questions of humanism and self-sacrifice as lead Coleman juggles issues of guilt over her sibling’s death, a flourishing and obscured romance with EMT, divorcee and father Mike, rising encounters with her ghostly menace and a doubtful professional relation with Southern grand dame and Cassadaga head mistress Claire.