Family Reunion

A decent, albeit plain, ghost flick

I think it's safe to assume that "Family Reunion" was produced with a very limited budget and the director, Michael Hawes, managed to use that budget carefully by creating a tastefully modest (perhaps too modest for its own good) supernatural atmosphere of ghosts and objects that move by themselves, cleverly avoiding badly done CGI or other atrocities. Without resorting to tacky visual or sound effects, this film manages to stay mostly on the serious side, except for a few delirious situations and some mildly bizarre dialogs.

In "Family Reunion", our main characters are the members of the Andrews family: Tom, the father; Kate, the mother; Erin and Billy, the children and, finally, grandpa Henry who tags along. The Andrews go on a trip to visit Kate's family for Christmas, but by Billy's request, Tom decides to make a stop at a ghost town called Sutterville. While they're there, the Andrews come across a policeman, who has just arrested a strange young man for vagrancy (weirdly enough, only Billy, the youngest member of the family, shows some outrage by the fact that arresting someone for vagrancy doesn't make too much sense). After this random encounter with the police, the Andrews decide to leave the place, but... craziness ensues, when the car begins to run by itself, taking the Andrews to the heart of Sutterville and leaving them stranded there (rudest vehicle ever). After this, the car battery dies, much to everyone's dismay, especially grandpa Henry, who seems to have an irrational aversion for Sutterville and channels his anxiety by smoking like a chimney.

Meanwhile, the young man who was arrested for vagrancy doesn't seem to be too concerned about the fact that they intend to keep him in a cell, as he constantly smirks and taunts the police officers. A lot of bizarre and gruesome situations occur around the young vagrant and as the police investigates his backgrounds, they come across strange information about...