In 1840, Levi Miller moved his family to the area that is now the Florida Everglades, in search of land. He picked a spot that happened to also be a sacred Indian burial ground, but despite the pleadings of the local tribe, Levi refused to move. One day, when Levi was away, a group of angry, Indian braves attacked the Miller homestead, torturing and killing Levi’s wife and daughter. Though the Indian braves were punished, Miller was never the same.
Move forward into the present, with two modern-day treasure hunters on the trail of Levi Miller, who hope to find his long lost homestead and any valuable artifacts they can dig up. However, they are woefully unprepared for what they finally discover buried on Levi’s land – Bad Spirits.
Content
“Bad Spirits” has an interesting concept. Anytime a film involves a puzzle or mystery of some kind, it is always good to try to get the audience involved with trying to solve it. While a microfilmmaker certainly does not have the resources for the complex plot of a movie like “National Treasure,” there is still a lot of opportunity for a low-budget film to be creative.
There are certainly enough interesting points in this film. For instance, I especially like the fact that Bobby found Levi’s journal at the bottom of a barrel of nails, at an estate sale. It is that kind of random discovery that often inspires someone to set out on a treasure hunt like this one.
However, there are quite a few moments where the story seems to drag a bit, almost as if the story is too simple. I think it would have been good to either trim the movie down a bit, or to add a subplot of some kind – perhaps another obstacle to overcome, partway through, or some other clue left behind by Levi Miller, perhaps even a false trail of some kind. The end of the movie is intense and seems to go on for a bit too long. Basically the same thing happens over and over again; therefore, either the scene should be shortened, or perhaps the addition of some new and different obstacle for the two men to overcome.
Visual Look
Probably the best visual aspect of this film was the fact that the filmmakers used a homemade dolly for a many of the shots in the movie. In most films the use of so many dolly moves might become too much, after a while, but in this case it really added a lot to the look of the film. There were some great shots, such as a dolly through Bobby’s treasure room, as well as several varied shots while the two men were exploring the island. The dolly shots really came in handy later on in the movie, when their superstition began to set in, where the slow dolly-ins definitely added to the paranoia and sensation of one who is being watched. The cleverly constructed, homemade dolly was also a big plus several ways. It added some great diversity as far as the images are concerned, as well as in its usefulness as a stationary tripod.
The filmmakers also included some old footage into the film – images of pioneers at the beginning of the film- while the story of Levi Miller and his family was told with text. Footage of Indians setting a cabin on fire was superimposed over a shot of Black Elk, the Indian who watches over the island, as he told the two men about how Levi’s wife and daughter were killed. Both of these additions were a very nice touch, a way to illustratively connect the past with the present, without having to actually shoot in “period”.
Additionally, there was some nice use of recycled green screen; as with the creation of the ghosts of an Indian brave, chasing two men into certain death, as Levi Miller’s wife and daughter try to protect the men from the Indian brave’s onslaught.
