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Ghost stories are difficult. Most people have their own preconceived notions of what a ghost should look like, and even when a movie manages to present a believable visual of a spiritual entity, it’s generally not enough to generate scares. Triad, a fast-moving tale of three college students dealing with such an entity, gives it a good shot, but only partially realizes its own ambitions.

The picture starts off by introducing not so much its characters as its characters’ personal beliefs: Carter is a hotshot philosophy student and champion of “secular humanism”; his buddy Jake is a devout if slightly naïve believer in religion; along for the ride is his girlfriend, Angie. The varying beliefs of these three characters are relevant only because they are all the personal information made available of them. This amounts to an extremely labored way of saying, “Here’s the skeptic, here are the believers…” Of the three leads, played by Adam Pasen, Evan Dollard and Hayley Maree Jannesen respectively, Pasen’s Carter is the most fleshed out and enjoyable, if a bit uneven. He comes off as a self-serving big shot at first, so it was surprising to see him caring about what happened to the other characters when things started getting tense. Dollard and Jannesen are a little bland in their roles, but to be fair, each is equally under-written.

Things begin to get a little nutty when Angie drags Jake and Carter along to help her clean out a supposedly haunted office. Immediately an unseen force traps Angie in the office, separating her from her two male companions. As Jake redefines the word panic, pounding on the door and running around trying to find a way in while yelling and screaming, Carter makes a pit stop at a bar to pick up some exposition from a paranormal-minded school journalist named Miles.

That’s pretty much the gist of the plot. There is something of a mystery mixed in there concerning the college administration, Carter’s role as secular humanism’s cover boy and the ghost, but it’s all expressed only in Miles’ breathless outpouring of information in the bar. If the story doesn’t quite amount to much, the movie itself is still engaging and is never dull.

Triad isn’t altogether scary, but it thankfully doesn’t go for cheap shots. There wasn’t a single “jump scare” in the entire picture, for good or bad, and the presentation of the ghost was believable and well done. Chris Folken’s direction is confident throughout, but the pacing is uneven and disorienting at times. Immediately after meeting the leads, we are plunged into their dilemma, without any rising action to speak of. Folken and his editing team’s work is crisp and effective in maintaining the frenzied tension in the later scenes, but the movie feels like a feature without a second act. The camera work by directors of photography Nathan P. Brown and Scott Kozel is lively and often very impressive, despite some night scenes that are a little too dark for a little too long.

The audio work, however, does not live up to the visual presentation. All of the dialogue seems to be poorly integrated additional dialogue recording. Voices sound the same outside in the open air as they do in an empty corridor, and while there are a few background elements, often all there is to hear is dubbed dialogue and Folken’s atmospheric music. And that music doesn’t stop. It’s not entirely necessary for any score, particularly in a horror movie, to be heard during early exposition scenes and in the case of Triad the score was often distracting. The music itself is adequate, but at times leans too heavily on the church-like chorus, a problem common with stories of this type.

Altogether Triad is a decent effort, but it left something to be desired. The fact that obvious care was given to the visuals while the audio was lacking proved to be a tremendous source of frustration. Hopefully Folken and co. will offer a more complete experience next time out, but in the meantime Triad is a moderate diversion. 

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