children of the grave [2007]

caught this last night on the Sy Fy Channel -- used to be known as the Sci Fi Channel, but like robin williams, as t.s. garp, in the film version of john irving's novel the world according to garp, the t.s. used to stand for 'terribly sexy' but now just means 'terribly sad' -- i watched portions of this fake docu-drama as i drifted in and out of consciousness.

didn't miss much i think. based on interviews with allegedly authentic ghost-hunters and their subordinates along with recreations of their investigations as they search for the ghosts of orphan children in all the usual places. what is it about most ghost-hunters anyway? why do they have to look like they either belong in the band lynard skynard circa 1978, or maybe they've contemporized their look like they might've stepped out of a white snake video via 1986.

still, the photography and some of the stories presented were fairly creepy. but when they were interviewing some milquetoast qua sheriff about the satanic cult in the backwoods of a state i can't recall now i almost threw in the towel. i love good ghost stories and it doesn't take much for me to raise the curtain of disbelief. the satanic cult angle, with the supposed blood-letting and human sacrifice, was nearly too much to bear. i mean, puh-lease. in these backwoods our rockstars had taken a series of photographs of the surrounding forest at night that when developed showed the shadows of the ghost of children between the trees. that was pretty freaky.

but when one of the longhairs is seen putting on body armor in preparation to his team's investigation of these ghost woods, just in case, and when the soundtrack devolved to a heavy metal song over a montage of spooky imagery, photos of the shadow children and serious rock&rollers complete with flashlights and radios combing the shrubbery, i fucking lost it. the only thing scary about heavy metal are the headbangers who think that horror movies all require metal for their movies to rock.

boo