This film was originally entitled "No Tell Motel," then was re-titled "Haunted Motel" when it was shown in local theaters. This actually was already a warning that this is going to be one lousy horror film. I should have taken that warning.
"Haunted Motel" starts with a tragic accident when a little girl was suddenly run over by a speeding car. Her shocked parents could do nothing but helplessly wail by the roadside in front of their motel (called the Round the Bend Motel). This scene shot in dramatic sepia is the best of the whole film (worth a star on its own). Everything else fell to pieces after that.
Several years later, a group of five young people meet a car accident and were forced to spend the night at an abandoned roadside motel. And, as all horror films of this type go, we see the members of the group get killed off one by one, apparently by a ghostly little girl. Of course, the explanations come at the end, but by that time, you don't even care if you completely get it or not.
During all this time, we get a convoluted and confusing sequence of inexplicable events, told with absolutely no sense of dread or terror at all. Even the ghostly little Angela looked so pasty and fake, you don't really get scared by her. All the characters (a drug addict, a masochist, a rapist, a pregnant teen and her clueless friend) were very thanklessly unlikable, and the unfamiliar actors portraying them did not exactly rise above mediocrity of the material.
This is a generic B-horror film all the way. No redeeming factors either in the story, technical or in the acting departments. This is tolerable only if you have nothing else to watch, but keep your expectations really low. 2/10
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