"Death of a Ghost Hunter" is an expertly crafted ghost movie that manages to both hold to the traditions of the genre while also delivering unexpected surprises. It's a movie that will satisfy those in the audience who are interested in the "science" of ghost hunting (as portrayed in the "Ghost Hunters" television series or by guests on late-night talkshow "Coast to Coast AM), as well as those who are just looking for a well-done supernatural thriller.

The exceptional quality of the film starts from a foundation of a good script that not only presents a solid story, but which is written so well that each character in the film has a unique way of speaking, making them and the entire situation that much more believeable. The actors all give top-notch, natural-seeming performances, taking the strengths of the script and amplifying them. Acting-wise, there isn't a moment in the film that doesn't seem real and a character that doesn't have believeable reactions to events.

That's not to say this is a perfect movie. There are some core elements to the plot that I find questionable-elements I can't comment on without spoiling some of the film's big surprises-because I find it hard to believe that even in a small town some of the circumstances surrounding the death of the preacher wouldn't come to light during the police investigation in 1982. (There are also what appears to be plot problems as the film unfolds, but those are intentional and they start to make sense as the pieces of the mystery surrounding the haunting begin to come together.) But, most of the problems with the film don't rise far beyond the level of nitpicking. In fact, it compares favorably to recent big Hollwood ghost movies that took months and hundreds of thousands of dollars to make, even though "Death of a Ghost Hunter" was, according to director and co-screenwriter Sean Tretta, shot over nine days on a budget of $10,000. In fact, there is only one point in the film where I thought, "Aha... the budget came up short" and it's a very brief, fairly minor moment where Carter is reacting to a ghostly apparition that has been captured on video and we don't get to see what it is. In fact, "Death of a Ghost Hunter" is more entertaining and coherent than most of those big-budget spook-fests. Despite it's small budget and brief shooting schedule, everything in this movie looks like a million bucks, including the times the film DOES show us ghosts, be they on tape recorded by Colin Green or in ghost-triggered "psychic flashes" suffered by Carter Simms and the creepy holy roller Mary Young. This is one of those films that builds the tension slowly but ends in a crescendo of horror. Even more remarkable (particularly for someone like me who watches a lot of films like this), just when you think it's over, "Death of a Ghost Hunter" gets even creepier. In fact, the most terrifying parts of the film occur after it seems to pretty much be over. At one point toward the end, the film goes into what seems to be a lazily written, expository over-kill mode. The key words it that sentence are "seems to be." What's actually going on is a gathering of threads and a completion of a stage upon which a truly scary finale will play out. It's one of the strongest, creepiest closings of a film I've ever seen. (And on a personal level, the final minutes of "Death of a Ghost Hunter" served as a warning against getting too jaded and failing to judge a movie on its merits but instead what I assume to be its merits, without waiting to actually see where the film is heading. It's that sort of attitude causes so many "real" reviewers to suck as badly as they do... they don't watch the movies for what they are but are instead too busy projecting their assumptions as to what the movie should be onto it.) "Death of a Ghost Hunter" is a movie that stays with the viewer long after you're done watching it. The more I think about this movie, the more I like it and the more impressed I am with what writer/director Sean Tretta, his co-writer Mike Marsh, and the excellent actors appearing in the film have accomplished.