Some Houses Refuse to Let Go

Read Time:5 Minute, 14 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
We Are Still Here (Tenth Anniversary Collector’s Edition Blu-ray)
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Genre: Horror, Drama
Year Released: 2015
Runtime: 1h 24m
Director(s): Ted Geoghegan
Writer(s): Ted Geoghegan
Cast: Barbara Crampton, Andrew Sensenig, Larry Fessenden, Lisa Marie, Monte Markham, Susan Gibney, Michael Patrick Nicholson
Where to Watch: available August 5, 2025. Pre-order your copy here: www.darkskyfilms.com

RAVING REVIEW: WE ARE STILL HERE leans into its sorrow like an elegy wrapped in blood and frost. Set in a wintry New England landscape, the film opens in the iciness of loss. A couple, grieving the death of their son, moves into a desolate farmhouse hoping for peace. What they find is far from silence. Ted Geoghegan’s directorial debut manages to create a haunting atmosphere that fuses horror with the raw ache of emotional trauma, and it doesn’t take long for the snow-covered calm to begin unraveling into something far more dangerous.

Barbara Crampton delivers a performance that feels deeply lived-in, caught between grief and hope. Her character, Anne, isn’t the typical genre scream queen—there’s an internalized sorrow she never oversells. Opposite her, Andrew Sensenig's Paul functions more as the film’s grounding. Together, they share a believable sorrow that makes even the smallest suggestion feel like a knife in the side. This isn't a film about jump scares (although it ironically has some stellar ones); it's about the ghosts that live in memory, in regret, and the bones of the walls.

WE ARE STILL HERE doesn’t waste time pretending it’s not a horror movie—it embraces it early. The house doesn’t hide its secrets for long, and the film’s 70s aesthetic isn’t just visual. Geoghegan draws from the era's slow-burn horror traditions, but rather than aim for sterile nostalgia, he injects the narrative with a pulsing menace. You can almost feel the chill radiating off the screen, not just from the snow, but from the collective coldness of the nearby town, whose residents know far more than they let on.

That looming presence—the town’s shared silence—might be the film’s greatest asset. Everyone seems complicit. Monte Markham, playing a menacing neighbor, carries the air of someone who’s seen what happens to those who ask questions. Lisa Marie and Larry Fessenden, as old friends drawn into the mystery, bring their energy to the proceedings. Fessenden, in particular, helps tilt the story into stranger territory, balancing the somber with the manic. These aren't just supporting players—they feel like fragments of the house’s fractured soul, each delivering tension from a different angle.

But what sets the film apart is its balance of the tragic and the terrifying. The horror doesn’t undermine the emotional weight—it amplifies it. The spirits haunting the home aren’t merely plot devices. They’re reminders of what’s lost, of what’s unresolved, and of how the past demands to be acknowledged, even when it reeks of rot and fire. The backstory involving the Dagmar family—former morticians whose presence in the house lingers in more than just memory—is gradually revealed.

Geoghegan doesn’t try to outsmart the audience with convoluted twists. Instead, he focuses on emotional clarity. We’re not left guessing what the ghosts want. The town’s secret isn’t some labyrinthine mystery—it’s a horrifying truth people have chosen to ignore, and now that ignorance is coming back in blood-soaked waves. It’s a morality tale baked in grime, where silence is a sin, and complicity ensures the curse keeps moving forward.

Visually, WE ARE STILL HERE operates on a knife's edge between restraint and gore-drenched horror. Cinematographer Karim Hussain crafts shots that linger, daring you to find movement in the frame, building dread not through sound but absence. Then, when the violence arrives, it’s sudden, cruel, and effective. The ghosts don’t breathe—they burn. This contrast between quiet and carnage mirrors the film’s emotion: slow pulses of grief punctuated by explosive reminders that, left unchecked, grief can turn to rage.

For a debut, WE ARE STILL HERE is an impressively confident entry into the genre. It pays homage to horror classics while maintaining its sense of identity. This isn’t a ghost story for the sake of scares—it’s a meditation on pain, silence, and the monsters we tolerate to avoid facing our guilt. Geoghegan demonstrates a firm grasp of how to make stillness terrifying, how to make a cold room feel suffocating, and how to wring catharsis from carnage. In the end, what lingers isn’t the blood, but the ache. The reminder that even in death, some emotions demand acknowledgment. And some houses? They require much more than that.

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[photo courtesy of SNOWFORT PICTURES, DARK SKY FILMS, MPI MEDIA GROUP]

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