For his new movie The Last Ghost Hunters, writer/director Dan T. Hall blends a mix of filming methods, genres, and aesthetics to form a style that is unique, albeit rather amateurish in its delivery. Despite its low budget, the film does feature some passable CGI to create the ghostly apparitions, as well as some truly surreal scenes whilst following the film’s main protagonist, who happens to be a medium. The Last Ghost Hunters is a feature-length version of the familiar ghost hunting shows found on Discovery+ and SyFy channels, and coincidentally, this film might just fit right in with those channels’ made-for-tv type movies.

Three ghost hunters — Faith (Moli Hall), Mitch (Ransom Pugh), and Kelley (Kelley McKinney) — set out to explore a house of horrors in Peru, Indiana. Armed with nothing but a camera, a few ghost-hunting gadgets, a handful of leads from locals, and Fath’s powerful medium abilities and knowledge of herbal alchemy, the trio attempt to make contact with a ghost and find a family trapped within an abandoned home, yet separated in the spirit world. As Faith converses with the spirits she begins piecing together the gruesome events that took place within their home, uncovering a history of murders that could potentially lead to their own at the hands of a killer ghost.

An opening teaser can either be a tantalizing taste of what’s to come or the kiss of death, and unfortunately with Hall’s ice-cold cold opening, The Last Ghost Hunters was dead on arrival. What followed afterward was a confusing hodgepodge of film subgenres that ended about as dull as the movie began. Hall blended documentary and theatrical filming styles with the horror themes of ghost hauntings and serial killer slashings to tell its story — however, because of the novice acting, The Last Ghost Hunters often unintentionally came off as a mockumentary, its obviously unnecessary ensemble of faux commentators becoming almost comical as the film drug on.

The Last Ghost Hunters had the potential to be a fun and/or scary movie, however, the many plot threads that led down paths of family turmoil, a skillful ghost medium, hauntings and spiritual portals, and serial killers did not all tie together in the end. The Last Ghost Hunters has a resolution but failed to provide anything interesting during its climax, not even the emotion needed to portray its bittersweet ending. It seemed the majority of the issues stemmed from the writing, as the supporting cast was made to do the heavy lifting of dolling out large chunks of information in between the actual story of the film.

The Last Ghost Hunters, unfortunately, comes off just as inauthentic as the ghost hunting shows that that film is modeled after. The line deliveries are either rushed or overacted and awkward, and there were one too many shots of people being dragged away dramatically meanwhile the movie itself never quite hit a satisfying level of intensity or terror; however despite the curiously missing horror for there being serial killers and ghosts about, I will say that the editing is quite good and the many shots kept the film at an even pace. I only wish that the film had chosen a lane — either darker and perhaps found footage to build an atmosphere that inspires fear, or, lean into its shortcomings and go into intentional comedy.

6 out of 10