The low-budget supernatural thriller "Skinwalker Ranch," shot in Utah and Idaho, shows there are still some good scares to be found in the "found footage" genre.
The ranch of the title is a farm where a little boy mysteriously vanished a year earlier and where the boy's distraught father (Jon Gries, from "Napoleon Dynamite") hopes he will return. The rancher reluctantly lets a team of supernatural researchers (led by Steve Berg) set up its multiple surveillance cameras, in hopes of solving the mystery. But the ghost hunters, joined by a skeptical journalist (played by Devin McGinn, the movie's director), find even more strange things happening.
McGinn and screenwriter Adam Ohler keep the tension steady throughout, parceling out red herrings en route to a frightening climax. But McGinn's secret weapon is the effective visual-effects work by Orem-based Blufire Studios, which has created creepy monsters and other eye-popping images.
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HHH
'Skinwalker Ranch'
Opens Friday, Oct. 25, at the Megaplex 15 (Valley Fair); rated R for language and some violence; 86 minutes.