SMALLS' FRIGHT FEST: CARNIVAL OF SOULS

In Carnival of Souls, we follow Mary Henry (Candace Hillligoss), an attractive young girl who gets into a tragic car accident with some of her friends when their car crashes and sinks into a river. She is able to escape the sinking car and make her way back onto shore. Traumatized, she takes a job as a church organist in another town. Once there, she is haunted by a ghostly figure who, try as she might, she can not escape from.

Candace Hilligoss is great in the lead role. Her character of Mary is aloof and distant with most other people in the film, who try and continually fail to connect with this lost soul. Mary becomes fixated with an old abandoned carnival not far from town, and it soon becomes apparent that the only way she may be able to stop this mad ghoul's haunting is to confront him at the carnival. 

Carnival of Souls is a very eerie, off-setting film that's got a great, weird vibe to it. The film's editing is simply fantastic, helping to keep the viewer on edge and adding to the eerie tone. The setting of the carnival is also a creepy one (in reality, it resembles more of a boardwalk than a carnival). You can practically still hear the barkers and the sound of the crowd even though it has been abandoned for quite some time. It's a beautifully realized set piece, and there is a lot of creepiness that takes place there.

Carnival of Souls is a film that was designed to make you question many things inside it, and it's superb and haunting ending is sure to leave you chilled to the bone. It's one of the eeriest films you can sample today, and while it almost feels as if on the edge of camp, it's always able to pull it back just enough so that you never laugh at the proceedings. It is low budget, but that almost adds to the chilly atmosphere here. If you like being thoroughly freaked out, and leaving a film with a chill on your back then Carnival of Souls is the film for you. I loved it, and will continue to re-watch it every Halloween season.

4 STARS