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Say what you will about low-budget horror, but every now and then it hits a humdinger!

Oh, daddy! Have I got a ghost story for you. I’m deadly serious. This flick’s the bomb.

“The Echo” is a ghastly little tale about the very haunted 5th floor of a New York apartment building.

The movie starts with Bobby (Jesse Bradford) getting out of prison and moving into his mom’s apartment. She died before his release, leaving him to pick up the pieces of both their lives.

It turns out that Bobby could get better sleep in prison. His neighbors fight violently, he has night terrors about his decaying mother and things start going bump in his digs long before he hits the hay.

Bobby’s neighbors don’t speak to him but watch him constantly. He thinks their vigilance is due to his strapping physique and the fact he just got out of the clink. They know they’re watching because his floor was host to a grisly homicide of a mother and daughter–a mother and daughter who still walk the halls from beyond the grave. Anyone one who sets foot on that floor finds they are haunted even long after they leave the building.

Brought to us by the same people who brought us “The Ring” and “The Grudge,” “The Echo” has a stellar haunted pedigree.

Director Yam Laranas originally worked in the Philippines on the original version of this film, which was called “Sigaw.” He also knows a thing or two about ghost stories. The greatest thing he knows is that to really scare people you show them less–not more.

The entire first half of the film is creepy innuendo of frights to come.

The ghosts slowly build their way into Bobby’s life. By the time the bumps and noises start to materialize, you will have long regretted turning out the lights.

There aren’t a lot of FX, but they are done well. The marginal blood and gore only serve to heighten your fear. One of my favorite touches is the use of ghosts that blend into the woodwork. It is not a CG effect. There might be a real person playing a ghost in a shot who you only see for a few frames and Bobby does not see at all. It is like playing a haunted “Where’s Waldo.”

The acting is good. You like the main characters. Bobby did time for manslaughter…but the man he killed was killed when caught in the act of raping Bobby’s girlfriend. It’s tough to fault Bobby for killing the guy. His girlfriend Alyssa (Amelia Warner) still likes him, and they are trying to piece together their relationship.

The ghosts are complicated. They just won’t come out and say what they want…not that they ever do.

There are nods to “The Shining” and even “Ghostbusters,” not that this film has any comedy. It is old skool scary like “The Changeling” and other classic ’70s-era ghost movies that truly set the hair on your arm on end.

I don’t know why they held this release for after Halloween. It is a genuinely horrifying treat.

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In 1905 Upton Sinclair shocked the food-consuming world when he finished writing his novel “The Jungle,” which exposed the American meatpacking industry for its grotesque abuses of labor and the appalling sanitary conditions of our food supply.

His one novel brought about more reforms and improvements than many people at the time dared to dream.

In our current times, 104 years later, the documentary “Food, Inc.” illustrates why we should be outraged by how many of those food safety reforms we’ve lost–particularly in the past 30 years. “Food, Inc.” recasts the spotlight on the modern food production industry, which it says has once again become disturbingly unsanitary and generally unhealthful for humans and the plants and animals we eat.

Incredibly, this documentary runs only 90 minutes while delving into complex issues such as farm subsidies, crop growth and management, sanitation, disease, public health, labor and patent law.

While graphically describing the many issues surrounding food, I was glad they pulled a few punches when it came to graphic imagery. That isn’t to say you won’t find some upsetting visuals; it just seems the filmmakers didn’t have a running bet to see how quickly they could make you vomit.

Dozens of farmers, food advocates, politicians and consumers are interviewed in the documentary. All of the companies who are most heavily questioned (companies such as Smithfield, Tyson and Monsanto) declined to comment for the film. This is a shame, as it would have been nice to hear their defense for the accusations (many of which are backed by evidence in the film) leveled against them. Yet, any number of facts and statistics seem to speak volumes for them–and it isn’t usually good.

For the record, I am a fan of processed food. You’ll have to pry my bag of chips from my cold dead hands. Nonetheless, this movie really got me thinking.

I’m resisting the urge to repeat the entire movie, but there were some issues in it that fascinated me. Here’s one that I found particularly interesting:

According to “Food, Inc.,” the e. coli bacteria that periodically gets into our food chain and kills or sickens many people originally evolved in cows. It turns out that feeding cows so much corn is really unnatural. Cows are supposed to eat grasses. The high-corn diet suppresses or inhibits a cow’s immune system from killing off e. coli. Cows when crammed into small feedlots get covered in their each other’s manure. E. coli can spread very quickly there. Even if a cow isn’t infected, all of the manure they bring into a slaughterhouse can quickly contaminate the machinery and subsequently hundreds of tons of meat, as we’ve seen repeatedly in the mass recalls on the news.

The e. coli trail doesn’t stop there. When runoff water from an infected farm or processing plant gets into a vegetable growers’ irrigation system–that is how we get infected spinach and other veggies.

The e. coli problem is only one of many issues that gets eye-opening treatment.

“Food, Inc.” doesn’t try to make vegetarians of us all, but it does ask us to question what we are eating and seek out more healthful alternatives. For example: If you love hamburgers and steaks, keep eating them–just find a good grocery store or butcher that features grass-fed beef from closer to home and processed (if processed) at a place with impeccable health standards. Of if you love veggies, only get them in season. Out of season, those same veggies might have undergone many manipulations to get them to look healthy and edible.

Unlike “I.O.U.S.A” and “An Inconvenient Truth,” “Food, Inc.” can get a little preachy. Some of the speakers seem a little “holier than thou.”

However, as a whole, this documentary presents a lot of great information people really should see and hear.

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