A Horror Film That Should’ve Stayed in Spirit Form
Ah, Cassadaga. The name alone sounds mysterious — a whispered Florida ghost town, a place where spirits roam and tragedy lingers. What we actually get, though, is less Sixth Sense and more Lifetime Movie with corpses and marionettes.Directed by Anthony DiBlasi, Cassadaga is a film that tries to be classy horror but ends up tripping over its own pretentious séance table. It’s 100 minutes of brooding, melodrama, and puppets — because apparently nothing says “psychological terror” like a murderer with a Hobby Lobby rewards card.
The Opening: Freud’s Favorite Cold Open
We start strong — and by strong, I mean “traumatizing in a way that makes you question your internet history.” A young boy in a dress plays with a doll, only to be caught by his mom, who freaks out and destroys both. So far, so Norman Bates: The Prequel. The kid, understandably upset, decides the only rational response is to castrate himself. Yes, thathappens in the first five minutes. No warning, no setup, just “Hi, welcome to the movie, here’s a pair of scissors and the worst childhood imaginable.”
This sets the tone for what’s to come — a film that mistakes shock for substance, trauma for storytelling, and mutilation for meaning.
Enter Lily: The World’s Saddest Art Teacher
Fast-forward to our heroine, Lily (Kelen Coleman), a deaf artist grieving her sister’s death and looking for a fresh start in Cassadaga, Florida — a real town known for psychics, séances, and now, bad horror scripts. Lily’s a sweet soul trying to heal, but unfortunately, she’s wandered into a film that hates her almost as much as it hates coherence.
She moves into a creepy mansion with Claire (Louise Fletcher, looking like she’s wondering how she went from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest to this) and her awkward grandson Thomas, whose hobbies include brooding, gardening, and being a red herring. Lily also picks up a side gig teaching art and starts dating Mike (Kevin Alejandro), the world’s most aggressively bland single dad.
Everything seems fine until Lily decides to attend a séance — because if movies have taught us anything, it’s that lonely women + psychic readings = haunted nightmares and poor decisions.
The Ghost Story That Forgot to Be Scary
During her séance, Lily contacts her dead sister and also gets a spiritual hitchhiker: Jennifer, a local woman who’s been murdered and apparently refuses to shut up about it. Soon Lily starts seeing visions of Jennifer’s death, complete with shaky camera work, bad lighting, and that “who turned on the blue filter?” aesthetic that screams direct-to-DVD horror.
What follows is an investigative subplot so half-baked it might as well have come out of an Easy-Bake Oven. Lily and Mike wander around town asking questions, discovering that Jennifer was the previous scholarship recipient (because apparently this school awards degrees in “Haunting Victims 101”). They find evidence that Thomas might be the killer, but this movie loves its fakeouts more than it loves narrative flow, so guess what? Wrong psycho.
Geppetto the Killer: Pinocchio’s Worst Nightmare
The real culprit is Christian (Rus Blackwell), a seemingly nice handyman who turns out to be the town’s resident psycho. And not just any psycho — one who kills women and turns their corpses into life-sized marionettes. Yes, he’s basically Buffalo Bill meets Jim Henson.
Christian, or “Geppetto” as the movie lovingly dubs him, could have been a genuinely disturbing villain if the film didn’t treat him like a Scooby-Doo monster reveal. His motives are fuzzy (daddy issues, mommy issues, “I like dolls,” who knows), and his lair looks like someone’s failed art project at a haunted Chuck E. Cheese. He spends his time arranging corpses with fishing wire, which might’ve been creepy if the puppets didn’t look like rejected Halloween decorations from Spirit.
When the big reveal finally happens, it’s less shocking and more of a “Oh, okay, I guess we’re doing this now.”
The Pacing: Like Watching Paint Dry (Then Haunt You About It)
One of Cassadaga’s biggest crimes — besides its existence — is how boring it manages to be for a film involving necro-puppetry and psychic hauntings. It takes nearly an hour before anything of note happens, and even then, it feels like the movie’s been tranquilized.
Scenes of Lily teaching art and crying in her studio go on forever, as if the editor fell asleep with the footage still rolling. Every “scare” is telegraphed by musical stingers so loud they could wake the dead — which, ironically, might be the film’s goal.
Even the ghosts seem bored. Jennifer’s spirit shows up now and then to scream, flicker, and disappear like a glitchy Zoom call. She’s less a vengeful ghost and more of an inconvenient pop-up ad in Lily’s grief browser.
The Cast: Acting Against Gravity
Kelen Coleman does her best, bless her, but there’s only so much she can do with a script that treats her character like a punching bag wrapped in symbolism. She plays Lily’s deafness sincerely — a rare trait in horror — but the movie immediately undercuts that by using it as a cheap tension gimmick.
Kevin Alejandro looks like he wandered in from a soap opera and never found the exit. His romantic chemistry with Lily is about as believable as a taxidermied puppet romance.
Louise Fletcher, an Oscar winner, deserves better. Watching her deliver exposition about scholarships and ghosts feels like seeing your grandma forced to work the night shift at Spirit Halloween.
And then there’s Rus Blackwell as Christian, the villain who seems to be doing a Home Depot Training Video version of serial killing. He’s calm, he’s collected, and he’s deeply uninteresting. When he starts monologuing about his “art,” you half expect Bob Ross to appear and tell him to add a happy little victim.
The Tone: Gothic Soap Opera Meets Home Depot Horror
Cassadaga can’t decide what kind of movie it wants to be. Is it a ghost story? A psychological thriller? A slasher flick about taxidermy and gender trauma? The answer is yes, but badly.
It tries to juggle grief, love, the afterlife, and serial murder, but drops every ball like it’s playing haunted dodgeball. The film occasionally stumbles into beautiful shots — mossy trees, candlelit séances — but then ruins the mood with dialogue so stilted it could be used to prop up a porch.
One minute, Lily’s crying about her sister. The next, a corpse puppet dangles from the ceiling while eerie violins screech in protest. It’s like someone edited The Notebook and Texas Chainsaw Massacre in the dark and called it art.
The Ending: Strings Attached
The finale finds Lily kidnapped by Christian, tied up, and prepped for marionette conversion. Just as she’s about to meet her end, the ghost of Jennifer appears, distracting him long enough for Lily to stab him with a pair of scissors. Cue redemption, closure, and one last vision of her sister giving her a spiritual thumbs-up.
It’s supposed to be cathartic. Instead, it feels like the film itself has been mercifully put out of its misery.
Final Thoughts: The Town That Should’ve Stayed Dead
Cassadaga wants to be deep — a haunting meditation on grief, trauma, and identity. What it actually delivers is a disjointed parade of clichés wrapped in supernatural mumbo-jumbo and puppet gore. It’s the kind of movie that whispers, “Are you scared yet?” while you’re glancing at your phone.
Somewhere beneath the melodrama, there’s a good story about loss and resilience. Unfortunately, it’s buried under bad pacing, worse writing, and enough marionette metaphors to make Pinocchio file a restraining order.
Final Grade: D (for “Dead on Arrival”)
Come for the ghosts, stay for the puppets — or better yet, don’t come at all.
Tagline: “In Cassadaga, the dead speak… but unfortunately, so does everyone else.”
