Screenwriter turned director Ted Geoghegan has delivered a confident feature debut with his haunted house tale, We Are Still Here. Following the tragic death of their son, Anne (Barbara Crampton) and Paul (Andrew Sensenig) move to a small and quiet town in snow-covered New England. Anne immediately feels a spiritual presence in their new home and suspects it could be their deceased son. She invites hippie mediums May (Lisa Marie) and Jacob Lewis (Larry Fessenden), the parents of her late son’s roommate, to spend a weekend and help confirm her suspicions. It’s not long before they discover the true evil that lays dormant in the home.

This is an old fashioned scarefest clearly inspired by the haunted house films of the 1970s such as The Amityville Horror and The Changeling. One of the greatest strengths of this film is that, like the previously mentioned titles, it treats the haunted house as if it were a living and breathing character. Not to be dismissed as just a setting for the carnage, constant shots from the outside of the home and its empty rooms help to build tension, finding the terror in stillness and foreshadowing the threat to come. These creepy still moments combined with a plethora of jump scares sprinkled throughout the first two acts makes We Are Still Here an incredibly paced horror film. What follows, is an excitingly manic and gory final act and the wildest conclusion to a horror film since The Cabin in the Woods.

A genre-staple séance scene leads off act three featuring a brilliant show-stealing Larry Fessenden. The horror film veteran is terrific here. Monte Markham also shines, giving a gleefully nuanced performance as the secretive town elder, Dave McCabe. Although the ghouls in the house are not very scary in appearance, their ruthless nature and elaborate way of killing are what makes them terrifying antagonists. Ted Geoghegan’s film contains enough brutal bloody violence to satisfy even the most twisted of viewers. There is a mythology surrounding the plot that is murkily developed but the film is so creepy and fun that it hardly matters. We Are Still Here relishes in its visceral attacks on your expectations and never lets up on trying to scare you. Come for the chills and stay for the mayhem.