A very different film from director Eric Stanze, Deadwood Park marks a drastically changed direction for Wicked Pixel whose previous efforts include the notorious Scrapbook and the surreal Ice From The Sun.  

The film follows a young man named Jake (William Clifton of China White Serpentine) who lives the big city to return to the small town where he spent his childhood. While this might not seem like a big deal on the outside, what we soon learn is that Jake’s younger brother was one of a few kids murdered in a spree of child killings that occurred in the area years ago. It seems there are still a few skeletons hanging out in the closets of a few of the locals and that the murders remain unsolved and hardly forgotten. 

After moving into the rundown family home, Jake meets Olivia (Lindsey Dee Luscri), the cute hardware store clerk in town. The two are obviously interested in one another but Olivia’s father, the town Sheriff (Bryan Lane), is not keen on Jake at all which makes things a little difficult for them. Of course, soon enough Jake and Olivia begin investigating the circumstances around the child killings and they start poking their noses in where they don’t belong. The more they look into things, the strange the circumstances become and things soon start to point towards a rundown amusement park that lays on the outskirts of town. 

Deadwood Park is a very good looking film. Stanze did his own cinematography on the picture and has obviously put a lot of thought and care into the compositions he uses here. As such, the camera does a wonderful job of capturing the macabre locations used in the shoot and this gives the picture more atmosphere than you can shake a stick at. Thankfully, this is more than an exercise in style over substance, and while parts of the movie do drag a little bit, there’s also a very good story being told. Where the film falls a bit short is in the acting department. While Clifton does a fine job with his role, Luscri doesn’t fare as well. She certainly looks the part – when you see her you can definitely believe her as the cute girl from a small Midwestern town – but her acting skills are not quite up to the challenge and this does harm the film in a few different scenes. 

That said, Deadwood Park definitely gets more right than wrong. The pacing is intentionally slow but this allows the movie to pull you in only to sucker punch you with a clever, unpredictable ending that you probably won’t see coming. Also worth noting is the locations that the Wicked Pixel crew secured for the shoot. The titular amusement park, or what’s left of it, is completely eerie and as we see it in the film, a rusting and hulking behemoth left to die under the weather and plants that have obviously taken their toll, it’s almost a character itself. The same can be said about the creepy old farm house where Jake spends much of his time in the movie. Stained from weather and wear it is at times sincerely ominous and Stanze has ensured that both these locations are lit and shot in such a way as to completely accentuate their creepier qualities. 

This film is more in line with more traditional ghost stories like The Changling and the insanely stylish cinematography goes a long way to making this low budget feature look considerably more expensive than it was to make - a testament to the production team's abilities (there’s a full on WWII battle scene in here for cryin’ outloud!). Those looking for cheap, trashy thrills or gore galore will not find what they're looking for here but if intelligent scares that sneak up behind you and linger for a while are you bag, check this one out.