Horror Movie Review: Haunted Valley (2022)

Written and directed by Juan Daniel Zavaleta, Haunted Valley is your bog-standard low-budget paranormal horror film with some notable things about it. One that is positive, it does have some creepy moments, and some that are negative. Namely it needing a much better editing job and it needing a less dull story.

The concept is really simple, and wholly uninteresting. The residents of the Rio Grande Valley have a ghost problem, and it seems to be getting worse day by day. One particular family seems to be haunted the most though, and they set about trying to find a way to free themselves, and the valley, from the ghostly grip.

It’s a big task for anyone to stretch his basic plot outline into a fully fleshed film with interesting characters, thrills, chills, and more. Which is a task beyond Juan Daniel Zavaleta even if he definitely has promise as a writer and director. It’s just the fact that the vibe this film gives off is more of a ten-minute short with some tension that pays off with a ghostly jump scare at the end. Instead, everything is stretched out here, to the point where the viewer must witness moments that are so mundane they should have been edited out.

After around twenty minutes of this, and little else, it becomes clear that Haunted Valley just isn’t going to have much to offer. Especially as the cast (Gabriel Aaron Zavaleta, Giahiza Ann, and Yvonne Tovar) seem to be mostly mute and when they do speak, very little is delivered with gusto. In the case of Gabriel Aaron Zavaleta, he looks confused most of the film, even when dealing with ghosts.

Speaking of which, what we get here is low budget and uninspired, but through some clever camera angles and early intrigue for what is going on, there are moments where things just feel a little creepy. It’s not sustained and dissipates as the film goes on, but when there’s so little positive to say about a film, any small thing is worth crowing about.

If you’ve got this far in the review, congrats, you probably made it further than most did in the actual film. It’s just too dull of an experience to be anything but one to completely avoid. No amount of kind words regarding some personal creepy factor can overshadow the litany of problems it has.