What I’ve Been Watching: We Are Still Here

One of the best things about iTunes and modern horror is how many indie horror movies show up there right away, before Netflix or Blu-ray or the theater. I love having the chance to watch buzzed-about small movies quickly.

We Are Still Here is one I caught that way. For $7, some friends and I got to watch it long before we ever would have using another method—and it was definitely worth it.

It’s a haunted house movie, in some ways. It’s a city folk vs. country folk movie, in some ways. It’s about grief and history and religion and much more. In it, a middle-aged couple whose only son, an adult, recently died move to the country to try to start life over again. They get a great price on a great house—replete with deeply creepy basement, of course. They find out why they got such a good deal when their neighbors stop by to relate the place’s dark history.

This scene is perhaps the highlight of the movie, with Monte Markham’s performance as the neighbor husband feeling so weird and laconic, so acutely regional and lived in, so funky and fun. The casting director must have danced a jig when he signed up. A great actor in this role.

I don’t know if We Are Still Here was particularly scary, nor am I sure it’s a classic, or even a great, movie. But that’s OK. It’s fun, it’s spooky, it’s got great performances, and is a very assured film for director Ted Geoghegan’s first feaure. I’d check it out if I were you.