Now, despite the great story writing, there are two story issues that are fairly small, but should still be noted. One is a story logic issue and the other is a story flow issue.
The first is the initial vanishing of Brody’s job and co-workers. When they first vanish, the receptionist remains, remembering nothing of any of the other people. The obvious idea is that he would have met the receptionist before he had met anyone else, which is a nice touch. However, the problem with this is that, in every other situation, when people vanish, all the people they impacted sort themselves into different places and locations. With no boss to have hired the receptionist, she wouldn’t have been working all alone in the offices in the strip mall. She would have instead been working for a different company, just as Brody learns that he works for another company when the folks at the telemarketing agency vanish. (Until she, too, vanished, of course.) The other thing is that the door to the vacant strip mall would have been locked, as all vacant stores are locked, which, at the very least, would have prevented Brody from simply sauntering out the door once everyone vanishes.
The second issue comes toward the end of the film, where we find Brody and Austin sitting in a bar talking. Brody explains to Austin that he recently read a book that one of the versions of himself in another life wrote and that he didn’t really understand it when he read it. However, as additional things have happened to him, the book has come to make much more sense. The issue comes from the fact that he proceeds to tell Austin about the book, but he does so in a real world sort of way, rather than a movie sort of way. Now, I’m a huge fan of realism, but Brody’s rambling narrative goes on so long and is so repetitive of certain concepts that I really felt like I was watching a dead horse getting kicked over and over. The narrative lasts for over six minutes (which feels much longer) and could easily be trimmed down to one to two minutes, as the main concept of his tale becomes readily apparent within that time. (Oddly, enough, the main concept of the tale doesn’t really seem to gel with the main concept that Brody took away from the book, which is a little confusing. However, this could easily be forgiven as simply Brody’s unique perspective if the tale was trimmed down.)
The acting in this film is really top notch, with Scott Graham again showing his amazing chops as a leading man. (It seems like every film he chooses to be in ends up getting great scores here!) The rest of the main character actors did a fantastic job as well, with truly compelling performances from Zak Jeffries and Kristin Carter. We often see minor characters kind of fall through the cracks when it came to acting in ultra-low budget films, but not on Ghosts of Hamilton Street. With the exception of one very minor character that’s a little unbelievable, everyone else really brings their A-game.
Finally, the ending is solid and makes sense, yet still has enough interpretation leeway to get a lively discussion going amongst most film lovers. I won’t give it away, because it doesn’t need to be tweaked, other than to shorten the narrative I mentioned in the writing portion.
Visual Look
The visual look of this film was nothing short of amazing! This honestly looked on par with many Hollywood feature films I have watched in the theater.
The camerawork from D.P. Adam Valuckas was gorgeous, with lots of cranes, dollies, and well-framed tripod shots. The hand-held shots in the film were really good as well, with the majority of the shots allowing a more organic feel without providing shake issues. The lighting was extremely professional, with an excellent eye for showcasing the mood of a scene—from the overly happy wedding scene with it’s bright lighting to a grief filled scene between Brody and Taylor at night in a firelit room. The makeup was quite good for most of the film, aside from one small scene in which Brody’s exhaustion makeup suddenly gets a little too pronounced in the middle of a single scene.
Now, despite the excellence in this department, there were a couple of issues.
First, there were two scenes, one in which Brody confronts David at Austin’s house about Sarah’s vanishing and one in which Brody slumps down crying in his weight room, where the camera seemed to be vibrating. These were handheld shots during times of emotion, so the movement may have been intentional, but it ended up coming just shy of migraine inducing. I would guess that these scenes used either an optical image stabilizer during shooting or that the director used post production image stabilization, both of which can result in a strange type of jitter. If it’s the former, then running it through a simple image stabilization software like SteadyMove or SteadyMove Pro with minor correction should smooth out the motion without blurring the image too much. If it’s already been put through a post production stabilizer, then the director might try re-running this newer footage through a different post stabilizer to see if it can smooth out the jitter.
