Imagine you’re at a dinner party and you decide to come up with a wacky scary story. You have everyone write down a creepy idea or scene and you put all the slips of paper into a box. Then you pull each one out and weave it into a story. The story ends up being weird, creepy, and all over the place. It also might end up looking something like low-budget, Canadian indie horror movie A Wakefield Project.

Here’s some actual expositional dialogue that explains the main characters’ situation:

ERIC: Look, Reese, you're my best friend. I know I've been a little messed up ever since my dad died. I just want you to know how much it means to me you dropping everything to come out here with me and fix this place up.

REESE: I'm going to be really honest with you. When you called me and you told me that you wanted me to dump our life savings into this shit hole in the middle of nowhere and turn it into a bed and breakfast, I thought you'd completely lost your fucking mind.

It’s so helpful when the characters narrate what’s going on.

So we have a pair of best buddies—one is sensitive, the other just horny—who want to fix up an old inn to turn it into a bed and breakfast only to learn a serial killer offed several redheads on the property years ago.

To figure out if they should be worried, Eric hires an online psychic, even though he bluntly doesn’t believe in psychics…because that’s something a staunch non-believer would do, right? Psychic Chloe is a pretty redhead (that’ll be important later!) who’s less of a traditional psychic and more into the frequencies of things. The idea here is that people, objects, places, etc. operate on different frequencies and she can get in tune with the dead and learn things about people based off their frequencies. It’s a fun idea and makes her character a little less clichéd than I predicted.

Now i know what you’re thinking. Haunted bed & breakfast, serial killer, psychic love interest…that’s enough for a movie, right? Oh, you fool. I haven’t even mentioned VHS tapes and solar flares yet, which play a huge part of this, or Eric’s recurring dreams that his non-existent son is in Creepypasta inspired danger, which is brought up early and never mentioned again. Oh yeah, and some of the locals have weird scars on their necks which…well, it’s creepy but it doesn’t go anywhere.

The movie almost feels like a gothic episode of Doctor Who - a small town under a paranormal siege that’s given a scientific explanation - only the TARDIS never lands to save the day. Instead, we’re left following the locals who just happen to deduce what’s causing their ghost problem and how to effectively deal with it. Turns out, you can mask your presence from ghosts if you have a hand crank radio. You may have heard of Chekhov’s gun: the literary rule that if a gun goes off in act three, you have to introduce the gun in act one. I could be wrong, but pretty sure the hand crank radio isn’t introduced before Eric pulls it out of his truck in the second half of the movie with something like, “Oh yeah, I happen to have this.”

Like Eric’s dreams about his non-existent son, we have a fun scene where Reese meets an older farmer, Sheryl (character actress Eileen Dietz, the face of Pazuzu from The Exorcist). It’s a great introductory scene that established Sheryl as an interesting character. I couldn’t wait for her to join the group and help with the ghosts or something. Anything.

Sheryl’s never mentioned again.

It may sound like I’m complaining a lot…and I am. But don’t you remember the dinner party analogy above? Telling a weird, all-over-the-place story with friends is fun, and I honestly did have fun with A Wakefield Project.

Eric and Reese are likable (and Eric’s introduced in an easy-on-the-eyes shirtless scene…jus’ sayin’), Chloe is sympathetic, and the film looks good.

Troy’s Takeaway: A Wakefield Project is a little creepy, a little goofy, and more than a little fun. If you like your horror serious and tight, this one might not be for you, but if you’re a fan of low budget, indie horror, you might want to check it out. Now available on DVD and VOD.