LANIER (2023)

2 stars

Reel 2 Reel Films. Digital. 5th May

There’s probably an interesting film to be made about the history of the creation of Lake Lanier in the 50s in Georgia, and the displacement of the townsfolk of the black community of Oscarville and its abandonment and flooding. However, the ghost story presented here isn’t it.

It opens with a young girl running away from someone or something. She falls and is pulled away by a masked, hooded person.

Cut to the opening titles – The camera prowls over a lake and into a large house.

After the credits we meet the Stevenson family — Jeff (Ali Ashtigo) who is a workaholic cop, his wife Jane (Jaime Lee) and their young daughter Kayla (Riley Madison Fuller) who is celebrating her birthday. They have won a competition and are are heading for a break at Lake Lanier to be part of ‘The What Lies Beneath Tour’.

On the way they stop so their daughter can go to the toilet in the woods. Distracted, she wanders off and ignores the yellow Crime Scene tape by the nearby lake. She screams as somebody grabs her. Jeff finds her, just as local police detective Daniel Wilson (Jarrett Michael Collins) rushes over to try and help. He is investigating a drowning at the lake. His superior officer Commissioner Williams is also there. Wilson says the lake is haunted and it involved ‘his people’ (as he puts it), which his boss dismisses. Daniel keeps having spooky visions, which turn out to be his grandfather telling him to seek some kind of retribution about what happened to their town in the past.

Back at the car Jeff sees a Missing poster tacked to a tree (the girl from the beginning?), which gets his detective mind working, but his wife demands they carry on on their trip and he stops thinking about work.

They arrive at their destination and meet Mariah (Shan Moreno) — Daniel’s wife — and their daughter Tasha (Ava Metallo). They head out with the other competition winners on a boat trip as part of their prize.

Things start to go awry when they get back. What has Daniel got planned for them? What revenge will he take for the perceived historical wrongs wrought by white folks on the black neighbourhood?

This is an odd mix of actual history and ghost story that seems to be trying to say something about racism, though it feels very heavy handed. It’s an interesting story, though the presentation here is poor, not helped by so so acting. There is no real atmosphere or tension created by the direction and script by William Eric Anderson and Cindy Estenfanie Kunz-Anderson, though it could be considered a worthy effort. The ending felt rushed.

Steve Kirkham