Director's Cut

by Vanessa Acton

Overview

The Sanford's Folly movie set has been abandoned since burning to the ground in the 1980s. Rumor has it the place is cursed after a film shoot gone terribly wrong. But that's not enough to scare Alex and his buddies away. After all, they live on an air force base. There's plenty of real-life stuff that's scarier than some fake western town, right?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781512419467
Publisher:	Lerner Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/28/2022
Series:	Atlas of Cursed Places Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	108
Lexile:	510L (what's this?)
File size:	7 MB
Age Range:	11 - 18 Years

About the Author

Vanessa Acton is a writer and editor in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She enjoys stalking dead people (also known as historical research), drinking too much tea, and taking long walks during her home state's annual three-week thaw.

Editorial Reviews

"In Director's Cut, Alex and his buddies from Edmonds Air Force Base break into the Sanford's Folly movie set, abandoned after a fire in the 1980s. It is rumored to be cursed after the death of the star actor. They realize they are in trouble when bad things start happening to each of them. Their only choice is to brave the hazards of returning to the movie set in the hopes of showing the original movie to the world. In Skeleton Tower, Jason's parents have decided to move yet again to work as caretakers at a historical lighthouse on the coast. Jason is surprised when strange things start happening until he learns of a shipwreck and hidden diary that may hold the clues to a curse. With the help of his sister and the ghost of a long-dead lighthouse keeper, Jason discovers that the only way to break the curse is to risk his life to save the life of another. In Deadman Anchor, Kendall would have preferred to go on a beach vacation, but when her Navy father decides that climbing Mt. Hood would be a good way to bond after his last deployment, Kendall cannot say no. The climb quickly turns hazardous, however, when a sudden blizzard turns up and the other climbers are injured. Bonding turns to surviving as Kendall takes the lead to keep their small group alive and break the curse haunting the mountain.



The Atlas of Cursed Places is a horror series with suspenseful plots and cliff-hangers at the end of every chapter. Geared toward struggling and reluctant readers and written at a fourth-grade reading level, this six-book series is a good alternative to other hi-lo series such as the Bluford Series. Older readers might find the plots and characters somewhat hollow and unrealistic; however, this series fills a niche for readers who need a stepping-stone series to engage them in reading."—VOYA

From the Publisher

2016-08-02
A cursed landmark complicates the lives of four teenagers.An abandoned Western film set lies in the middle of the Arizona desert. Narrator Alex and his friends live nearby, on Edmonds Air Force Base, and they’ve heard the stories. Everyone who worked on the set back in the 1980s, when it burned down, was cursed, and it’s still active, inflicting “eternal bad luck” on anyone who enters. But Alex’s friend Gabby is a budding movie nerd, and she’s itching to check it out. After a creepy expedition to the site, bad luck plagues the group of friends, and it’s up to them to break the curse. The tale moves from story beat to story beat with little fuss and no padding. Unfortunately, the author speeds along so fast that character work gets left behind, with the result that nobody has a particularly individual voice. Aside from the Islamophobia endured by pal Ahmed, the story sticks to Main Street to its own detriment. When there’s no emotional involvement in characters, there’s little reason to worry whether they’ll make it to the end in one piece. Alex and Gabby are Latino, and the base is realistically multicultural. Three other entries in the Atlas of Cursed Places series publish simultaneously: Deadman Anchor, Radioactive, and Skeleton Tower. A skeleton with no meat to speak of. (Horror. 10-14)

Kirkus Review