The Good People of Orphan Ridge
Written and Directed by Matthew Fisher
Starring Emily Muse, Hazel Jones, Nate Ridgeway
Unrated
Runtime: 1 hour, 39 minutes
Available on demand

by Nikk Nelson, Staff Writer, Cinematic Maniac

I haven’t reviewed films for MovieJawn in a while. Regularly, indie filmmakers and producers will email us requesting reviews. I am a big supporter and fan of indie films and indie filmmakers so I used to like to say yes as often as I could. Then, three times in a row, I agreed to review films that I couldn’t even sit through. They were so immediately terrible in an unevolved and subhuman way, I had an honest crisis of faith as a critic. No, “subversive” isn’t when you STILL open your film with a half-naked woman but THEN there’s this GUY who you think is gonna kill her but see it turns out he’s ALSO half-naked…with a dildo strapped to his chin. I don’t want to be the old curmudgeon here but somewhere along the way a lot of people seem to have decided that being intentionally terrible is “art” and “punk” and I swear on the soul of John Carpenter, it is not. Being terrible is still just terrible. 

So, I went into writer/director Matthew Fisher’s The Good People of Orphan Ridge with the sliver of hope I managed to regain over the last six months by rewatching Cheers. And I was very pleasantly surprised. This is what I’m talking about when I talk about indie. There’s no money here and that’s obvious at almost every turn. But there’s talent and for the love of John Carpenter (last one, I promise) we need that so badly in the world right now. Talent is another thing a lot of terrible people have decided isn’t necessary when you can just be terrible. It’s more often than not an expression of the rage they have when all the expensive equipment and all the budget from their dad’s rich friends and all the film school in the world didn’t make them talented. Matthew Fisher and everyone else involved with The Good People of Orphan Ridge do not have that problem. 

Day and Leon are childhood friends, and they have a band that, after a disastrous audition with a battle of the bands-esque situation, are questioning their artistic relationship. Well, Day, played by Nathanael Lirio doing their best Jack Black impression—isn’t, but Leon, who wants to take music more seriously, is. In an attempt to keep the band and their rapidly changing life together, Day hatches a plan—the band is going to record one last album—in a HAUNTED. HOUSE. This is the only aspect of the film that was not my cup of tea and it’s not the film’s fault at all. What I see to be its immediate influences, films like The Blair Witch Project (1999), Sinister (2012), and what has felt to me like an endless sea of paranormal activity/possession-exorcism horror movies, not to mention recent TV shows like Ghosts and School Spirits, has left me exhausted by the subgenre. I would need something truly original to surprise me. I constantly chalk this up to I’ve been alive too long and seen too many movies. 

The film’s clumsier and more on-the-nose moments come in its attempting to subvert these influences. Having said that, the script is very well-written overall and the cast of almost all non-professional actors do a fantastic job, considering. Whatever doors may or may not open for Matthew Fisher, I would like to see their next film starring Nate Ridgeway who plays Andy, the put-upon friend/ghost servant. I want to see Fisher put Nate through something like what Sam Raimi did to Bruce Campbell in Evil Dead 2 (1987). The music is great, thanks to Kevin Ray—I liked it so much it was almost unbelievable to me, script-wise, that the band was rejected at the beginning of the film. Props as well, no pun intended, to the production/art direction/makeup effects/costume design of Sadie Baer and Erin Wester. The ghost creatures are legitimately terrifying, and Fisher followed the fundamental rule of creature-features: monsters are best shot in darkness, shadow, or out of focus. Don’t show the audience the whole monster. Let our imagination do some work too. All in all, The Good People of Orphan Ridge revitalized my love of, and faith in, indie filmmaking. I hope to see more from all of these artists. My favorite line by far sort of encapsulated the whole movie for me:

“Why is everyone ruining everything?!”

“Change isn’t ruin, Day…” 

As an aspiring writer, I have been both Day and Leon at different points in my life. I therefore really enjoyed a story about those two people rescuing each other from themselves.