On Oct 1, 2024 viewers can go on a Halloween treasure hunt with Leah, Tessa, and Marshy in the brand new movie Treasure Trackers. Named for the brothers who basically formed the town, Carterville features an epic story of gold, betrayal, and death. Interested in the history of the town, Leah and her friends begin a quest to learn more and maybe discover the gold buried underneath.
Available to purchase on digital platforms Oct. 1, 2024, Treasure Trackers boasts a fun treasure hunt as 3 misfits battle bullies, solve clues, and discover historical facts about Carterville. It stars Charity Rose, Amelia Salazar, Sean Jay, Sam Coffelt, Kim Sandwich, Cooper Tomlinson, Zephaniah Terry, Jaymee Vowell, Mike Stanley, Jim Johnson, Matthew Tarricone, Constance Reynolds, Alfred E. Rutherford, Julie Oliver-Touchstone, Cliff Jestice, Patrick G. Keenan, Leora Berry, Chris Thiede, and Austin Von Johnson.
I receieved the chance to review Treasure Trackers and here is what I thought. Please note: SPOILERS BELOW!
Treasure Trackers follows a California transplant, Leah Weaver. After her dad ditches her in Carterville, Leah learns about the Carterville founders and the cursed buried gold. When a bully looks to release the curse, Leah and her two friends, Tessa and Marshy, go on an adventure to track down the treasure and destroy it.
With several clues to solve, meddling parents, and a scary Raven Witch hiding in the forest, the search for Silas’ treasure could prove to be difficult. In fact, it might be impossible to find once we discover that it could’ve been buried in the underworld.
Made for pre-teens, this “scary movie” brings the fun of Halloween as it melds the worlds of the living and the dead. Like most treasure hunts, Treasure Trackers has several riddles to solve in order to unlock the next clue. While the creepy vibe is low and the jump scares are almost non-existent, It still gives off that ghostly suspenseful feeling of a Halloween story.
The riddles, creepy vibes, and a feeling of suspense helps to strengthen the movies prowess, however, Treasure Trackers is definitely a straight to digital film. It comes across as a writing project that some random college student had to complete in record time, making sure to check off all the common tropes, such as character backstories, foreshadowing, and pages of descriptions. Bringing a creative writing piece to the screen is a difficult task and Treasure Trackers falls a little flat. The backstories of several characters have no purpose, there is a lot of false foreshadowing, the movie has several moments of wasted space, and it leaves behind so many questions.
The backstories of a character can make or break the connection an audience has with the story or a movie. In Treasure Trackers, after her mom dies, Leah is ditched by her dad in Carterville. If you want the audience to hate a character, this is a great start. We never truly understand the dad’s decision, other than he has to go commercial fishing to earn money. Because of this last ditch effort, Leah is left with her Aunt and her Aunt’s competitive eating husband.
I bring up the “competitive eating” aspect because the directors decided that this characteristic is important. The camera pans to the trophies, shows his eating habits, and makes this first impression a defining moment. One would think that this characteristic would be a larger part to the story…It isn’t. In fact, it’s never mentioned again. The background of this character was useless. Imagine if they had taken the opportunity to make one of the trophies a clue, perhaps it was made from a Carterville artifact, which featured the next riddle. Instead, the character falls off the map, and the backstory was wasted space.
Wasted space doesn’t end at character development, it continues into the foreshadowing…better described as false foreshadowing. The decision to showcase unimportant moments is a common theme throughout Treasure Trackers. I’m not sure if the hope was to mislead the audience and create suspense or if it was purposely done to annoy the viewers. What I do know is that it causes disarray and a lack of interest in the story. For example, in one scene, Leah is alone in the forest using the metal detector her dad bought her (because, you know, they are broke). She finds a metal key laying next to a fallen tree, which had been marked as the tree that killed Silas. One would think this key was extremely important. Maybe it opened the treasure chest or unlocked a hidden door. Being found in such an auspicious location, surely means that this key would be the key of keys. Nope. Just an old key. The tree is never showed again, the key is used to deceive a bully, and the entire reason for this scene is lost. Wasted space.
The foreshadowing is often misplaced with scenes that give the audience more questions than answers. In the scene where Leah is using the metal detector inside a witches circle, she never picks up the hidden compartment. I have to ask, why? It wasn’t deep, there was metal on the book and on the mirror, and there was a large metal lever to open the compartment. Her metal detector should have been screaming, and yet not even a blip sounded off from her device. Why? What caused this?
At least the foreshadowing alerts the audience that Treasure Trackers will get a bit dark. In order for Leah, Tessa, and Marshy to find the treasure, they must go where the Raven Witch buried the chest. That means they must go to the underworld. Yup, we follow the three kids as they enter a portal to hell. With a lake of fire, a floating brain buzzer, a random gameshow quiz run by a stuffed raven, and a cursed chest, the story goes from a treasure hunt to souls of the damned. This is where the adventure picks up speed and reaches the climax of the story. With only minutes on the clock before the portal to hell closes, Leah, Tessa, and Marshy must destroy the chest without releasing the soul of Silas, and escape hell before they are stuck there forever.
This ending is exciting. With a limited time to find the gold, crazy lava falls, and the pressure to destroy the much needed money, the audience can feel the stress as the three friends fight to save the world from Silas. I think the ending is the best part of the movie. They need to take this vibe and spread it throughout the whole film. Imagine if this sort of urgency continued through the story, forcing the audience to exhaustively follow the kids as Halloween and the end of the world inched closer.
Even though Treasure Trackers fell flat with their character development, false foreshadowing, and wasted space, it is a fun Halloween adventure that takes the audience on a treasure hunt with riddles, bullies, and portals to the underworld. It’s interesting to see where each clue leads and how the kids solve the problems they face even though we are left with more questions than answers. The ending is exciting and the urgency of the ending is fantastic. I wish that the whole movie had that same urgency feeling. This will not be the next Goonies or Hocus Pocus, but Treasure Trackers is still a fun movie to watch during the spooky season of Halloween.
More about Treasure Trackers
Release Date: Available to Purchase on Digital Platforms 10/1
Starring: Charity Rose, Amelia Salazar, Sean Jay, Sam Coffelt, Kim Sandwich, Cooper Tomlinson, Zephaniah Terry, Jaymee Vowell, Mike Stanley, Jim Johnson, Matthew Tarricone, Constance Reynolds, Alfred E. Rutherford, Julie Oliver-Touchstone, Cliff Jestice, Patrick G. Keenan, Leora Berry, Chris Thiede, Austin Von Johnson
Executive Produced By: Tomás Yankelevich, Peter Bevan, Mariana Sanjurjo, Matthew D. Miller
Produced By: Jason Potash, Paul Finkel, Ricky Blumenstein, Harris Kauffman
Co-Produced By: Nicholas Chow, Roxana Dellocchio, Alan Luna, Natalie Ballesteros
Screenplay By: Harris Kauffman
Directed By: Drew and Nate Garcia
Run Time: 93 mins
Rating: PG for some scary moments, language, mild thematic elements and a suggestive reference.
Full Synopsis: TREASURE TRACKERS follows the adventure of three middle school kids who band together to find their small town’s mythic treasure— and destroy it. The story begins with Leah Weaver’s arrival in the nowheresville Southern town of Carterville, where her father has just dropped her off with her kooky aunt and uncle while he takes up work abroad. A fish out of water, Leah has trouble fitting in at the local middle school, until she meets fellow misfits Tessa and Marshy.
When Leah learns the folklore surrounding the small town’s founders from the amiable librarian, Mr. Bigsby, Leah recruits Marshy and Tessa in a hunt for the hidden gold. Leah soon discovers that there is much more to the legend than she originally understood: the gold bars are cursed by the town’s local witch, the “Raven Witch”, and it now possesses the trapped soul of the evil town founder, Silas Carter. Whoever finds the gold risks releasing Silas’ wicked spirit on the world. Leah, Marshy, and Tessa’s hunt for the gold bars is given new meaning when they discover that the local bully, Rhett Perry, and his high school friends are also on the hunt. Now it’s a race to solve the clues left behind by Silas Carter to destroy the cursed gold, and prevent Rhett and the teenagers from releasing his evil spirit on the world.
With help along the way from Tessa’s mysterious grandmother, the kids continuously work to outsmart the teens, leading to a final clue that brings about the treasure hunt’s climatic ending: Silas Carter’s gold can only be accessed through a magical portal on Halloween night. On All Hallows’ Eve, the trio of misfits embark on their final mission to destroy the gold, a journey which takes them into a magical realm overseen by none other than the Raven Witch.
