We Are Still Here 2015 Review: A Terrifying Haunted-House Horror Sleeper
My Rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ☆ 4.2/5
Snow on the ground, an old farmhouse, and a grieving couple looking for peace. That is how this story begins, and it sounds familiar on purpose. This We Are Still Here 2015 review covers a ghost story that dresses up like a quiet 1970s chiller, then reveals something much nastier underneath. It stars horror icon Barbara Crampton, and it may be one of the most satisfying haunted house sleepers of the last decade.
We Are Still Here 2015 Review: An Old-Fashioned Ghost Story
We Are Still Here premiered at the South by Southwest festival on March 15, 2015. Dark Sky Films released it in limited theaters and on video on demand that June. It marked the feature directing debut of Ted Geoghegan, who also wrote the script.
The film is deliberately old school. It is set in 1979, and it looks and feels like a horror movie from that era. There are wood paneled rooms, heavy sweaters, rotary phones, and long, quiet shots of a lonely house in the snow.
The setup is classic. A couple who have suffered a terrible loss move into an isolated house in a small New England town. They want a fresh start. Within days, they start hearing things. Then they start seeing things.
That is exactly as much as you need to know going in. The real fun of the film comes from discovering what kind of haunted house this really is. It is not the kind you expect, and the reveal is a big part of the pleasure.
So this We Are Still Here 2015 review stays spoiler free. You will hear about the cast, the mood, and the film's reputation. The house's deepest secrets stay safely in the basement.
A New House After a Terrible Loss
Anne and Paul Sacchetti are a middle aged couple trying to survive grief. Their son, Bobby, has recently been killed in a car crash. The loss has hollowed them both out.
To escape the memories, they buy a large old house in the tiny town of Aylesbury. It sits on a lonely stretch of snowy countryside, far from neighbors and noise. Paul hopes the move will help them heal. Anne is not so sure anything ever can.
Paul is played by Andrew Sensenig, who gives a quietly sturdy performance. He is practical, skeptical, and trying very hard to hold everything together. He wants to fix things, and he cannot fix this.
Soon after they arrive, strange things begin to happen. Odd sounds drift through the house. Small, unexplained events pile up. Anne starts to feel a presence in the house. She becomes convinced that Bobby's spirit has followed them there.
For a grieving mother, that idea is both frightening and comforting. Anne wants to believe her son is near. That hope is exactly what pulls her deeper into the mystery of the house.
Barbara Crampton Gives the Horror a Human Center
Barbara Crampton plays Anne, and she is the heart of the film. Her performance keeps the supernatural story grounded in real emotion from start to finish.
Crampton plays grief beautifully. Anne is fragile but not helpless. She moves through the house like someone sleepwalking, looking for any sign of her lost son. When she thinks she has found one, the mix of hope and fear on her face is hard to watch.
Kilroy readers will know Crampton well. She became a horror legend in the 1980s with Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator in 1985 and From Beyond in 1986. That same year, she also appeared in the cult favorite Chopping Mall. She later spent years on daytime television before returning to horror with films like You're Next.
Her return to the genre in the 2010s was one of the great comebacks in modern horror. We Are Still Here is one of the best showcases of that second act. Geoghegan wrote the part with her in mind, and it shows.
Watching her here is a treat for longtime fans. The scream queen from the 1980s has become a mature, nuanced actress. She gives the film a soul that keeps you invested long before the scares arrive.
This House Has Been Waiting for Them
The house itself is a slow, creeping presence. At first, it seems simply old and drafty. Floors creak. Pipes knock. The wind rattles the windows.
Then the noises begin to sound deliberate. Something moves in the walls. Footsteps cross empty rooms. A strange heat seems to rise from somewhere below.
The basement is the center of it all. Every haunted house movie needs a room you do not want to enter, and this one has a great one. It is dark, cramped, and wrong in ways that are hard to put into words.
The film is smart about pacing these moments. Early events could almost be explained away. Each one is a little stranger than the last. By the time Anne and Paul admit something is truly wrong, the house has already tightened its grip.
What exactly lies beneath the house stays a secret here. It is enough to say that the building is not just haunted by accident. It has been waiting a long time for someone like the Sacchettis to move in.
The New England Setting Is Half the Movie
The film is set in New England and was shot on location in upstate New York during a hard winter in early 2014. The cold is everywhere. You can almost feel it through the screen.
Snow blankets the fields and drifts against the house. The trees are bare and grey. The roads are empty. The isolation is total. If something goes wrong, help is a long way off.
Cinematographer Karim Hussain captures that bleakness beautifully. His wide frames make the house look small and lonely against the white landscape. Inside, the rooms are dim and heavy with shadow.
The town of Aylesbury adds another layer. It is small, tight knit, and quietly suspicious of outsiders. The locals are polite, but there is something guarded in the way they look at the new family.
New England is also classic horror territory. It is the home of H.P. Lovecraft, and Geoghegan has spoken about Lovecraft's influence on the film. The movie even slips in a sly nod to Lovecraft's fictional university. The setting feels cold even before anything supernatural happens, and that chill never leaves.
Larry Fessenden Arrives and Things Get Stranger
About a third of the way in, the Sacchettis get visitors. Anne invites old friends Jacob and May Lewis to stay for a weekend. Their arrival changes the energy of the whole movie.
Jacob is played by Larry Fessenden, a beloved figure in independent horror. Fessenden directed cult films such as Habit and Wendigo. He also founded Glass Eye Pix, which has helped launch many indie horror filmmakers.
Here he plays a scruffy, laid back aging hippie with a fondness for whiskey and New Age ideas. He is funny, loose, and refreshingly casual after the heavy grief of the opening scenes.
May is played by Lisa Marie, best known for her work in Tim Burton films such as Ed Wood, Mars Attacks!, and Sleepy Hollow. May has psychic sensitivities, and she immediately senses that the house is not empty.
Together, the Lewises push the story further into supernatural territory. They encourage the Sacchettis to reach out to whatever is there. That turns out to be a very bad idea.
These Are Not Your Typical Movie Ghosts
Many modern haunted house movies feature pale, wispy spirits that whisper and float. The ghosts in We Are Still Here are something else entirely.
They are physical, solid, and dangerous. They look like charred, smoldering figures, blackened as if they have crawled out of a fire. When they appear, they do not simply drift past a doorway. They act.
This is where the film begins separating itself from softer haunted house stories. These spirits are not sad, misunderstood souls looking for peace. They are angry, and they are capable of real harm.
Geoghegan keeps them hidden for much of the film. You catch glimpses in the dark or a shape in the corner of the frame. That restraint makes their full appearances far more effective.
Who they are and what they want stays a mystery for now. Part of the fun is learning that the answer is more complicated, and more disturbing, than the Sacchettis first believe.
The House Has a History the Town Would Rather Forget
Every good haunted house has a past, and this one has a doozy. Early on, a local man named Dave McCabe pays the Sacchettis a visit. He is played by veteran television actor Monte Markham.
McCabe tells the couple about the Dagmar family, who once lived in the house. The Dagmars came to Aylesbury in the 1800s. Their story is grim, and their time in the house ended badly for the whole town.
McCabe tells the story like a friendly neighbor sharing local lore. Yet something about his visit feels off. Before he leaves, his wife quietly slips the Sacchettis a note. It is not a welcome card.
As the film unfolds, it becomes clear that the haunting reaches far beyond one unlucky family. The town of Aylesbury knows more about the house than it lets on. Many residents would rather keep that history buried.
Susan Gibney appears as a local woman named Maddie, and she has her own part to play. Both she and Markham are veterans of Star Trek television, which is a fun bonus for sci fi fans. The major revelations about the Dagmars and the town stay hidden here. They are best discovered on screen.
Ted Geoghegan Builds It Slowly
Ted Geoghegan began the project as a tribute to The House by the Cemetery, Lucio Fulci's 1981 Italian horror film. At the time, he was working as a publicist for Dark Sky Films. He showed the script to Dark Sky and to producer Travis Stevens of Snowfort Pictures, and both agreed to make it.
Fulci fans will spot references everywhere. Many characters are named after people connected to Fulci's films. The Sacchettis share a name with Fulci's longtime screenwriter, Dardano Sacchetti. The Dagmar family nods to actress Dagmar Lassander, who appeared in The House by the Cemetery.
There is even a joke for sharp eyed viewers. The characters drink a whiskey called B and J, a wink at the J and B Scotch bottles that turn up constantly in 1970s and 1980s Italian horror films.
Geoghegan's biggest choice is patience. He lets the atmosphere develop slowly. The first half focuses on grief, the house, and small unexplained events. He gives us time to care about the characters before anything truly terrible happens.
That slow beginning makes what comes later much more effective. When the film finally changes gears, the contrast is enormous. The quiet build has made you comfortable, and that is exactly when the film strikes.
And Then the Blood Starts
Here is the fun part of this review. If you think We Are Still Here will stay a restrained, tasteful supernatural drama, you are in for a big surprise.
For most of its running time, the film plays like a moody, slow burn ghost story. Then the final act arrives. When We Are Still Here finally cuts loose, it really cuts loose.
The last stretch is a wild, bloody explosion of violence. The ghosts stop lurking and start acting. The town's secrets come crashing into the open. The quiet farmhouse becomes the setting for one of the most outrageous finales in modern haunted house horror.
No individual deaths will be described here. Seeing them unfold without warning is half the fun. It is enough to say that the gore is extreme, inventive, and very much in the spirit of Fulci.
The shift in tone is jarring in the best way. It is like watching a polite ghost story suddenly throw off its coat and grab an axe. Many viewers cite the finale as the reason they fell in love with the movie.
Practical Effects Give the Ghosts Some Weight
A big reason the film works is its commitment to practical effects. The makeup effects came from Oddtopsy FX, and they give the movie a tactile, physical feel.
The ghosts look like real, solid beings. Their charred skin and smoldering bodies feel like something you could reach out and touch. That physicality makes them far more threatening than digital phantoms.
The gore in the finale is equally hands on. Blood, wounds, and violent injuries were created with old fashioned techniques. Some digital touches help, but the core of the carnage feels physical and messy.
This approach gives the movie an older horror film character. It feels closer to the 1970s and 1980s films it honors than to many slick modern productions.
For fans who grew up on practical monsters and rubber gore, it is a real treat. The effects help sell the idea that this house is dangerous, not just spooky.
Why We Are Still Here Is Such a Good Horror Sleeper
The 2010s were flooded with supernatural horror. The Conjuring, Insidious, and their many imitators filled theaters with haunted houses and demonic spirits. In that crowd, a small indie film could easily get lost.
That is what happened to We Are Still Here. It received a limited release and a video on demand debut, with little marketing muscle behind it. Many casual horror fans never heard of it.
Critics, however, loved it. When the film reached home video, it carried a Rotten Tomatoes rating above 90 percent. Many reviewers called it one of the best horror films of its year.
Its strengths are easy to list. It has a recognizable horror cast led by Crampton and Fessenden. It has a beautifully bleak setting. It has an old fashioned ghost story that slowly turns into something much darker. Then it has that unforgettable, blood soaked payoff.
Together, those elements make it far more interesting than its simple premise suggests. It is exactly the kind of movie horror fans love to discover and share with friends.
Does We Are Still Here Still Work Today?
It absolutely does. Ten years after its release, the film has held up remarkably well.
The atmosphere is as effective as ever. The snowy landscapes and creaking house still create a powerful sense of dread. The 1979 setting has also helped it age gracefully, since it never looked modern in the first place.
The performances remain strong. Crampton's grieving mother still anchors the story. Fessenden and Lisa Marie still bring welcome warmth and humor. Monte Markham still makes a wonderfully unsettling small town elder.
The practical effects have aged well too. Because they were built by hand, they do not carry the dated look that early digital effects often have. The ghosts are still creepy, and the finale is still shocking.
The pacing is the one point of debate. The first half is deliberately slow. Viewers who want immediate action may grow restless before the film shifts gears. It runs only about 84 minutes, though, so the patience required is modest.
For anyone willing to settle in, the payoff is worth every quiet minute. In fact, the slow start is precisely what makes the ending land so hard.
Who Should Watch We Are Still Here?
This film is perfect for fans of haunted house stories and supernatural horror. If you love creepy old houses and small towns with dark secrets, you will feel right at home.
Fans of practical effects and older horror movies will appreciate its handmade monsters and 1970s style. Fans of Italian horror will enjoy spotting all the Fulci references. Barbara Crampton fans will see one of her finest modern performances.
It also suits viewers who enjoy a patient first half. If you like a slow burn that builds tension carefully before exploding, this is right up your alley.
Squeamish viewers should be warned, though. The ending is extremely violent and bloody. The film is rated R for a reason.
Anyone who likes a ghost story with some actual teeth should put it on the list. It is quiet, then it is creepy, and then it is something else entirely.
Final Thoughts 4.2/5
This one earns a 4.2 out of 5 from Kilroy. Wrapping up this We Are Still Here 2015 review, the film is a terrific discovery for anyone who loves old fashioned horror with a modern bite.
Barbara Crampton gives it a strong emotional core. Larry Fessenden and Lisa Marie add color and humor. Ted Geoghegan builds the dread patiently, then cuts it loose with a finale that horror fans still talk about.
It loses a few tenths for a first half that will test some viewers and a story that leaves a few questions hanging. Still, the atmosphere, the effects, and that explosive payoff more than make up for it.
It begins with grief, an old house, and noises in the dark. By the time We Are Still Here shows what has really been waiting inside that house, the quiet little ghost story has become something considerably nastier.
If you have never seen We Are Still Here, don't read another spoiler. Find the movie, turn down the lights, and discover exactly what has been waiting in that basement.
