The Other Side of the Tracks stars Brendan Fehr from the WB network’s Roswell and Tania Raymonde from the ABC series Lost.

GOODNIGHT FILM

Sex, ghosts and teenage tragedy seems a potent combination for a movie. But in the Connecticut-made The Other Side of the Tracks, the slow pacing and melancholy tone of the film undoes much of the good will generated by a solid cast and its romantic-macabre ending.

In The Other Side of the Tracks, which will go on screen Saturday as part of the Southeast New England Film, Music & Arts Festival, it’s the 10th year of moping sadness for Josh (Brendan Fehr). Josh hasn’t gotten over the train accident that killed his high school sweetheart, Emily, a decade earlier. It’s also time for Josh’s 10-year high school reunion which draws his old buddy Russ (Chad Lindberg) back to town.

Everyone, from Russ to his mother (Shirley Knight) to his teenage lesbian niece, tells Josh to get on with his life. But Josh can’t forget his tragic past. Small wonder. He has stayed in town since graduating. He works at his sister’s pizza joint called the Trackside (it’s in a former train car) which is, well, trackside where trains whoosh by at what seems every five minutes. He walks home along the tracks to a sparely furnished rundown dwelling that fairly screams HAUNTED HOUSE! No wonder Josh is in a funk.

Things get spookier for him when he finds a bracelet along the tracks that look like the one he had given Emily just before she died. Not long after, a young woman arrives at the Trackside looking for a job. She says her name is Amelia, but she looks exactly like Emily. We know this because in a later flashback we see that Tania Raymonde plays both Amelia and Emily.

Things get even weirder with images of decomposing corpses flashing in front of Josh’s eyes to spook him, but not frequently enough to put the film into overdrive. Writer-director A.D. Calvo has some good ideas, but his direction is too plodding and there are too many dull spots.

Fehr, who starred as the teenage alien Michael Guerin on Roswell, is a good-looking young actor, but the character is so downbeat one keeps hoping like the rest of the characters that he will just get on with his life. Fehr also looks much younger than his supposed 29. In a scene that flashes back 10 years to when Josh was 19, he looks exactly the same … and more believable at that age.

There are more hints in the script than all those ghosts that something is amiss here. If you’ve seen enough horror films you may figure out the movie’s secret long before Calvo springs his big surprise in the final 10 minutes.

**The Other Side of the Tracks

Starring: Brendan Fehr, Chad Lindberg, Tania Raymonde, Beatrice Rosen, Natassia Malthe, sam Robards, Shirley Knight.

Rated: Not rated, contains adult themes, profanity.

mjanuson@projo.com