User Reviews

The Croke Patterson Mansion exists in Denver, Colorado. The story is that they are going to restore the house to become an actual inn. There are some actual truth this mockumentary about the mansion. The Crokes and Pattersons have lived and have ties to the mansion. The house became a bed and breakfast. Will there ever be a haunting. The cast don't seem to know what's going on themselves. The story tries to be scary but it isn't. The film whether real or not won't be frightening. I'm disappointed to know that it wasn't real like Blair Witch Projects for a haunted mansion.

This is a fake documentary. I always wonder why these keep getting lumped in with actual documentaries, but I guess it is too tedious to weed the fakes out. At any rate, the first half of the movie is pretty interesting and spooky as long as you can suspend disbelief. The second half delves into the inevitable "explanation" bit, where the mystery MUST be explained, laid out for the viewer as if they were idiots, in an impossibly specific manner. They act as if a major studio is forcing their hand to make a formulaic movie despite not having the funding of a major studio. I will never understand why filmmakers don't get that the mystery is what makes a story interesting, and the second you explain all of it is the second it becomes boring. At the point they start talking about the Catholic "purgatory" belief system you can shut it off, because that is the point the fake mystery is solved.

I'm not sure if it actually qualifies as a "spoiler" if you reveal that absolutely NOTHING happened during the making of this documentary, but I thought I should turn the spoiler alert on anyway.

Here we have a house with a fairly pedestrian history and in which people with ties to it seem to suffer commonplace maladies at what seems to generally be the rate of the public at large.

The documentarian slept in the house for a couple of weeks, nothing went on, so he seemed to come up with a personal-safety angle (lack of smoke alarms that would have been evident on Day 1) so that he wouldn't have to remain there.

Even the anecdotal evidence of sightings, etc., seemed fairly pedestrian and there didn't really seem to be more than a handful of people with stories to share to begin with.

Things got so bad that the production deteriorated into a completely unrelated discussion of purgatory and how backgrounds of artists' depictions of purgatory from centuries ago look vaguely similar to locations in Garden of the Gods (Colo.), where the stone was quarried to make the mansion in question. Granted, if you torture the camera angles enough you can find the same similarities at ANY rocky location, but pointing that out would have removed what seemed to be the only remaining thread holding a narrative of haunting together.

The production values were fine, research/information about the house seemed VERY thin (or there just wasn't much to find), but overall this is just sad.

THE CASTLE PROJECT is a found footage indie horror flick that masquerades as a real documentary, as do so many. This one tells of the renovation of an old castle in Colorado and has a bit of a SHINING vibe to it, but the film itself is a total mess and very difficult to enjoy. The filming style is very limited, usually consisting of close-up actor interviews mixed with bits of CCTV footage and some historical context shots and scene-setting. It's very amateurish and dull, and one of those films where nothing really happens.

If you want a horror/ghost story where nothing scary or even interesting happens, then "The Castle Project" is the movie for you.

Witness Brian Higgins film himself night after night only to record nothing. Listen to Brian Higgins wax philosophic about religion, spirituality, and the advent of Purgatory. As if all of this wasn't boring enough, Higgins goes on to blather on and on about Dante's Inferno.

As far as bad "documentaries" go, where absolutely no compelling evidence is recorded or presented, "The Castle Project" is almost as bad as the absolutely insipid "Trail of the Kiamichi Beast". As the on-camera narrator of this flop, Brian Higgins is about as palatable and fulfilling as a slice of stale while bread with a thin slathering of spoiled mayonnaise. This film SUCKED on every conceivable level.

I feel like I just watched an 80 minute ad for a bed and breakfast, and I'm not even mad. The greenscreen interviews and poor sound quality shows a complete lack of experience, because it's literally just some architect who want to remodel an old house for a commercial property. Their commitment to spending the least amount of money during the production of a commercial as possible is, quite honestly, commendable. Lol. I mean, it doesn't feel like I watched a movie, a documentary or even a mockumentary. I can only describe it as... marketing, for lack of a better word, considering the Patterson Inn is open for business. I don't know about you, but I can't be mad at it. It's clever.

Look, folks, all you have to do is Google the mansion. Higgins is an architect who decided to make his own film about a property he'd bought with plans to renovate. Try this: https://Colorado encyclopedia.org/article/croke-patterson-Campbell-mansion (remove space)

Now about the film, it has a bit of everything you'd expect, including uncertainty as a conclusion. I've never taken EVP spoken words seriously because I think the "translations" tend to get stretched by the listeners. Be that as it may, I thought the "Dracula" bat was hilarious, and the recorded sounds legit. Well, as legit as stuff moving through pipes ...

Can I explain loud bangs and footsteps? Nope, and I don't care to try. I found the whole thing interesting and engaging, the people involved believable (except for the psychic). What's really impressive is the attitudes of those exposed to acts of haunting: they laugh it off.

If you have Amazon Prime then I recommend it for a lark.