Sarah Landon and The Paranormal Hour is reminiscent of RL Stine’s “Goosebumps” mixed with a bit of Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys. The premise and concept have promise but they are hampered by a tiny budget, bad acting, and a mediocre storyline with too much babbling and not enough action. It’s hard to imagine anyone but kids and tweens finding much to enjoy about this film. Even they may prefer the slicker, bigger-budgeted films and television series around like the recent Nancy Drew update. Sarah Landon will appeal mostly to kids and adults nostalgic for Goosebumps and other cheesy kiddie series.

The film is about a girl named Sarah Landon (newcomer Rissa Walters) who comes to a small town named Pine Valley to visit with her late friend’s grandmother. Forced to stay in town due to car troubles (how convenient), she soon realizes that the guesthouse she is staying in is haunted. She discovers a dark secret that plunges her into a supernatural mystery involving an evil secret and the aforementioned “paranormal hour”, which is between midnight and 1 am, where something terrible is foretold to happen. The actors just aren’t very good and the film moves at a slow crawl.

The low-budget film has a nice transfer but except for a “psychic readings game” is devoid of extras. A commentary and some featurettes would have been nice.Sarah Landon and the Paranormal Hour is very slow and amateurish, it has a few minor charms but those charms are few and far between. It’s best left as a film to skip except on a rainy afternoon when there’s nothing on television and families are in need of a relatively painless way to burn 80 minutes.

Film Grade: C

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