Ah, Ghosts of Goldfield — the movie that asks, “What if The Shining had zero atmosphere, zero scares, and a supporting cast that looked like they got lost on their way to a Monster Energy drink commercial?” This 2007 supernatural “horror” film, directed by Ed Winfield, is less of a movie and more of an endurance test. It’s like watching a group of Hot Topic employees cosplay as ghost hunters in a Holiday Inn that forgot to pay the power bill.
You can almost smell the Axe body spray wafting through the film reels.
A Haunting We Could’ve Skipped
Let’s start with the premise, which sounds halfway decent on paper — until it’s actually on screen.
A group of five twentysomethings, led by Julie (Marnette Patterson), decides to explore a derelict hotel in the ghost town of Goldfield. Their goal? To capture footage of the ghost of Elisabeth Walker, a maid tortured and murdered in Room 109. It’s a setup that screams potential — an abandoned Nevada mining town, a vengeful spirit, and a crew of college filmmakers. You could make an atmospheric gem out of that. Or, if you’re Ed Winfield, you could make Ghosts of Goldfield and prove that atmosphere is optional when you have fog machines and bad lighting.
Julie, our protagonist, is apparently psychic — not in a “cool final girl” way, but in a “has migraines every 15 minutes and stares at random furniture” kind of way. She’s haunted by visions of the murdered maid, Elisabeth Walker, and her grandmother’s mysterious necklace somehow connects her to the past. The problem is that the movie explains none of this coherently. By the halfway mark, you’re just rooting for the ghost to kill everyone so you can go home.
The Cast: Discount Scooby Gang
The group of paranormal explorers looks like they were assembled from a MySpace casting call.
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Julie (Marnette Patterson) – Our psychic lead. Her main talents include whispering “what’s happening to me?” and walking into danger without a plan. She’s like if Nancy Drew had a concussion.
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Chad (Kellan Lutz) – A pre-Twilight Kellan Lutz, back when his main acting range was “smirk” to “squint.” He’s supposed to be the macho leader type, but he spends most of the movie reacting to dust particles like they’re nuclear fallout.
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Keri (Mandy Amano) – She’s the token “serious” one who says things like, “We need to get this on tape.” Her personality could be replaced with a tripod, and no one would notice.
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Dean (Scott Whyte) – The comic relief, which in this movie means he’s slightly less miserable than everyone else.
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George (Chuck Zito) – A grizzled local who knows the legend of Goldfield but delivers every line like he’s just realized he’s not getting paid.
And yes, Roddy Piper shows up for about five minutes. It’s as if the ghost of “Rowdy” Roddy was summoned from beyond the grave to collect a paycheck, grumble something about curses, and disappear before the plot does.
The Ghost That Couldn’t Scare Casper
Let’s talk about the titular “ghosts” — or rather, the single ghost who’s supposed to be scary but instead looks like she wandered off the set of a 2003 music video.
Elisabeth Walker (played by Ashly Margaret Rae) is the murdered maid whose spirit haunts the hotel. She should’ve been a tragic, terrifying figure — something between The Ring’s Samara and Crimson Peak’s gothic nightmares. Instead, she looks like she was styled by a Spirit Halloween employee on a smoke break. Every time she appears, she’s bathed in blue lighting and accompanied by that low-budget horror sound effect — you know the one, like a refrigerator humming ominously.
The film’s scares rely heavily on jump cuts, flickering bulbs, and that trusty old “someone’s reflection in the mirror” trick. It’s horror for people who’ve never seen horror before — or for people who fell asleep during Ghost Hunters and woke up to this by mistake.
The Script: Now With 85% More Confusion
The writing in Ghosts of Goldfield is like a haunted maze designed by people who’ve never actually been in one. It’s twisty, disorienting, and ends in a dead end covered in fake cobwebs. The dialogue sounds like it was written by an AI trained on bad episodes of Supernatural:
“Do you think ghosts can… like… feel pain?”
“I don’t know, but this footage could change everything.”
“Wait, what’s that smell?”
“It’s the past. It’s burning.”
No one speaks like a human being. Every line feels like it’s trying to be deep, but lands somewhere between “teen goth poetry” and “fortune cookie found in a morgue.”
The pacing doesn’t help. For a film about ghosts, very little actually happens. There are long stretches of people walking through hallways with flashlights, whispering “Did you hear that?” before shrugging and moving on. The movie’s biggest scare is when someone accidentally trips over their own tripod.
The Visuals: Paranormal Budgetivity
Let’s give credit where it’s due: this movie was shot on a budget smaller than most people’s wedding receptions. The cinematography tries hard — dim lighting, handheld shots, weird filters — but ends up looking like a college project filmed entirely on a flip phone. The “special effects” consist mostly of smoke machines, blinking lights, and the occasional Photoshop filter.
The titular hotel looks like it was built from leftover set pieces of a Western porno. And yet, somehow, it’s still the most believable thing in the movie. The town of Goldfield itself — supposedly an abandoned, haunted ghost town — looks suspiciously like a movie ranch in Burbank with a “CLOSED” sign slapped on the door.
Every supernatural encounter feels weightless, both literally and figuratively. There’s no sense of menace or mood — just a lot of fog, screaming, and actors who look like they’d rather be auditioning for The Hills Have Eyes 3.
The Editing: A Jump Cut to Hell
The editing in Ghosts of Goldfield deserves a separate paragraph because it’s honestly its own villain. Scenes start and end mid-sentence, flashbacks appear with zero warning, and sometimes the camera cuts away from something just as it’s about to be interesting — almost like the movie’s embarrassed to show itself.
One moment you’re in a haunted hallway, the next you’re in a sepia-toned flashback about a maid being tortured, and then you’re suddenly back in the present with no transition whatsoever. It’s less “nonlinear storytelling” and more “oops, I dropped the footage in the blender.”
The Ending: Plot Twist, Nobody Cares
By the finale, Julie realizes that her grandmother’s necklace somehow connects her to Elisabeth Walker’s ghost — possibly reincarnation, possibly family curse, possibly the scriptwriter giving up halfway through. She defeats the spirit by… existing, I think? Maybe forgiving it? Or maybe she just out-bores it into leaving.
It ends the way all bad horror movies do: with a cheap fake-out scare that’s supposed to tease a sequel that never came. (Ghosts of Goldfield 2: Still Gold, Still Fielding never materialized, sadly.)
Final Verdict: Paranormal Mediocrity
Ghosts of Goldfield is the kind of movie that feels like it should be playing on a dusty DVD player in a pawn shop. It’s not scary, it’s not funny, and it’s not interesting — but it is there. Like a ghost, it just sort of lingers around your living room until you forget it existed.
The cast does their best, but even Roddy Piper can’t suplex this script into coherence. The ghost isn’t frightening, the direction is confused, and the scares are as empty as the hotel itself. Watching it feels less like entertainment and more like punishment for people who illegally streamed The Grudge in 2004.
