I wasn’t sure if I’d get credentialed for this, but all the publicists and volunteers here were very accomodating, even though one did have some harsh words for CityBeat (which plugged the fest HERE.)
Anyway, I have my pass, so now I have to earn it. I’ll be attending the fest all week, reviewing new films you’ll probably be hearing about for the first time. And drinking free vodka.
AN AMERICAN HAUNTING (note: this movie screens again today, Sunday, at 12:30 p.m. at the Arclight)
A documentary crew actually interviewed me on the way into this screening, probably using the logic that a guy with blue hair will look interesting in a montage. And what I told them may not have been the kindest thing, but it’s true — this movie is writer-director Courtney Solomon’s follow-up to DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS. He may not want to be remembered that way — I travel in geek circles wherein virtually any horror/fantasy/sci-fi flick will be defended by someone, but nobody steps up on D&D’s behalf — but fortunately for him and his rep, this new movie’s quite a bit better. And totally different.
It begins with a young girl running through the woods, as an invisible something chases her up to her room, where she sees a vision of the stereotypical J-horror gray-faced girl with black hair hanging in her face. This is appropos of nothing, and doesn’t relate to any subsequent events, and of course it’s just a dream. But we find out that the girl has been up in the basement and brought down some creepy old letters and a doll with a cracked face. RRRReeeal smart move there, girlie.
Anyway, mom gives Absolut vodka some gratuitous product placement (smart move, Courtney, as most film fests do indeed have major vodka sponsors) starts reading the creepy old letters, and the rest of the movie is the story she reads, set in 1815. Initially, it seems not unlike that BLAIR WITCH prequel which never got made.
So, the 1815 story takes place in the same house, inhabited back then by a family called the Bells, headed up by Donald Sutherland (John) and Sissy Spacek (Lucy), both actors whom I like a lot better as old people than I did as youngsters. First, they hear some bumping around up in the attic. Then John goes to court and is judged guilty of charging excessive interest to a rumored witch woman (can’t find the actress’ name right now, but maybe my readers know). The witch is pissed that she doesn’t get as much of a settlement as she’d hoped, and threatens John and his daughter Betsy (Rachel Hurd-Wood, who really does look like she could be Sissy Spacek’s kin). Then the shit hits the fan.
Mysterious wolves attack, then disappear. Doors slam. Betsy is raised into the air and slapped around by invisible hands. Stuff falls and burns. Betsy also starts to hang out with a weird little girl who no-one else can see. John starts coughing blood and hallucinating deformities on his tongue.
Courtney Solomon knows how to yell “Boo” at an audience. His scares are old-fashioned, but definitely effective. That’s no small thing, so take it into account when I say that unfortunately he comes up a bit shorter in other areas.
The story structure needs work. Essentially, Betsy has haunted nights over and over again, until suddenly the “entity” eventually sees fit to tell her why it’s so pissed off. And I won’t spoil that, but it doesn’t make much sense — the entity is really into blaming the victim, it seems.
The cinematography, by Adrian Biddle (THE MUMMY) is inconsistent: at times, notably when Sutherland is out in the woods hunting, it looks great. Other times, it looks like a cheap TV special. Occasionally we go into ghost POV shots — at their best, as when the ghost leaves the house to chase a carriage, one is reminded of EVIL DEAD. At worst, there are lots of unmotivated back-and-forths between color and B/W. I blame the Oliver Stone influence.
Production values: Meh. Low-budget films must be careful about period stuff. At one point, a Bible is torn page by page by the entity, and the paper is very clearly modern stuff. On the other hand, Solomon does make the 19th century pastime of playing checkers while drinking whiskey look like the coolest thing in the world.
I don’t wanna be hard on the guy, because this is so much better than his first film, and he has a sense of scares. But I really do think he’d be better off dropping the “writer” part of his “writer-director” label. And I do expect this film will get a distribution deal, if it hasn’t already. It’s certainly better than THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE.
I kinda liked the DND movie. Though it was horrible. It did have potential, though, so I could understand this one being good.
Adrian Biddle actually died December of last year. It’s entirely possible he didn’t shoot the entire movie at all, and they brought in somebody else to finish things out (I don’t actually know- but given your cinematography comment it seemed worth pointing out.)
You are right about the entity blaming the victim, I really don’t understand! And is the entity her former self as a child, the part of her childhood that was taken away by Papa Bell’s actions? I don’t think that, that was very well excecuted because I guess it is good to leave the audience asking questions but not wtf?!
I thought the Exorcism of Emily Rose was a very good movie; but then again I am not a very good critic! As far as the story line of Emily Rose, I give it an A! We as movie goers had not been put to a good demonic thriller for a long while, And..leave it to-part two or three of the Exorcist… and well, you get the picture….
The bottom line is An American Haunting better live up or I will give no more credit to those films that (claim to be) in part true!!
I thought this movie was cool. Its freaky and hard to follow if you dont watch it all. I liked it….
THE REAL IN-DEPTH ANALYSIS:
I don’t have time to explain the whole movie, but you really have to pay attention to get it. It is actually a pretty good movie, and puts me in mind of the horror rapist movie, Gothika with Halle Berry. Basically Mr. Bell was raping his daughter since child hood, and at the same time he cheated the witch of her land years later. The witch is a bit of a distraction to confuse you, really the curse is not from the witch, he does it to himself, the spirits try to get the others attentions to show that the daughter has been being raped. The witch use to live on the property and ends up falling upon some of the little girls bloody underwear, which are results from the rape, she gives them to mr. bell and tells him hes cursed himself, which refers to saying I did not put the curse on you, the spirits know you have done wrong and you are being punished for it. The black slave and others think the witch put blood on the cloths to curse them, but it had nothing to do with the witch, the blood was from the girl being constantly raped, a grown man and a young girl equals blood in panties, pretty sicK, considering this stuff occurs frequently in todays society, without the ghost, only if there were spirits that would condem these type of people. anywayz, I played one part of the movie in slow mo, during the part with the blue light and I saw that mrs. bell in the room actually caught mr. bell in the room with the daughter, so she knew that there was a rape occuring and she was afraid to do anything, thats why she lets the possessed daughter kill the father with the posion at the end. It was basically his fate and punishment. The little girl ghost thats a young version of her, was her past, because she had also been raped as a little girl, she had just blocked it from memory like many rape victims do. So the ghost got involved to tell the daughter that this was occuring and she need to not hide from it. She had to do away with the evil entity, which is actually the father. This si why the ghost opens the book in the one part and turn to the page remeber. And she goes “remember what?” because she does not want to remember what had and still has been occuring to her every night in that room. The father is raping her at the begining and thats what makes the noise, he then catches up to mrs. bell and says he hears the noise as well, meanwhile its his just been raped daughter running into her room from the attic. And the reason the exorcism did not work and the spirit was able to throw the bible was because the spirit was good and not evil. It was not satanic, but it was holy, and it was trying to show the family that the daughter had been being raped by the father. Before the girl kills the father a young ghost of herself appears and tell her that the father had taken her “innocence” meaning “virginity.” The pun was mr. bell went against the word of the church, but he could be forgiven for the stupid interest charge on the so called witch, but his raping of his daughter was not forgivable. The witch said she would curse the daughter and father in anger, but she did not really curse the daughter, it was just a coincidence that she happen to say her over the other childern and at the same time she was being raped by mr. bell. Also she was mr. bell’s prize possession, you will see that he protects her from the teacher when he comes over, because he does not want her conversating with anyone, because he believes the truth will leak out, and the witch mistakens this for protective love, so thats why she says shell curse the little girl as well. The teacher knows abou the rape, after the ghost tries to respond to his questioning, the ghost tries to tell them that hes there for a reason, but the father disrupts the ghost by calling it unholy and then yelling at it, because he figures out the ghosts objective and what it is trying to do, which is unveil the truth. So once he breaks the communication the ghost takes the girl panifully up the steps and reinacts what the father would do in order to get ther daughter up stairs to be raped. And the smacking symobilzed how the father would over power her and smack her to shut her up. And when she starts spreading her legs and stuff in bed, the ghost is helping the daughter rienact the rape, by possesing herm since she will not tell herself. As for the beginning of this movie, well at first I though it had nothing to do with the movie, but it is a perfect piece to the puzzle. Basically it was a family living in the same house at modern day time. The daughter was currently at her fathers and is running through the woods because her dad also wants to rape her and shes trying to get away. When she sees the little black haired ghost inside, that is actually an image of her young ghost coming out and showing her that she needed to remeber being raped and tell her mom. The next scene she is at her mothers house, and the girl just recently coming from the rapist dad;s house sits in her bed having nightmares like the bell’s daughter, expierecing the same thing. She goes into the attic, because the spirit possessed her and got her to find the readings written by daughter bell’s teacher. This way the mother would read them and get a hint of what was going on in their family. At the very end the mom tells the daughter its her dads turn to keep her, and she innocently ablidges, knowing that she will be raped their, but she says nothing. But once she gets in the car and the mom waves good bye, she enters back in the house and the bell’s daughter’s ghost is their to tell the mom that her suspecion is correct and she says”go save her” or something like that. And the movie concludes with the mother chasing the car that the dad drives off in, and you see the daughter in the back window frantically panicing wanting her mom to catch up with the car. Now that her mom has found out on her own, she wants the help her mother has offered. So basically the bell witch haunting, has no witch envolved. Their were angels present in the house doing what they had to do to uncover an evil scam. Maybe the witch did put a hex on the land so such spirits could intervene in the problem, but their were no indivudual curses set on either mr. bell or his daughter, he was the evil that was being cleanse by holy spirits, which is why the bible and pastor did not phase the spirits, because they were not evil, the spirits tossed the book and tore out pages, trying to tell the family that they were good spirits, and they could not be summoned away by holy worship. Somebody mentioned that the girl at the beginning was being chased by no one. But, she was actaully being chased by her dad, the makers decided to make the dad not present to give you a sense of what was to come with the spirits guiding you to the incident in the actual occurence. The was the one breaking down doors and chasing the girl through the woods, but they made it look like a ghost to get you thinking, because if they actually showed the father then you would know what the movie was about, and this would ruin the suprise ending, and I wouldn’t have to peice all of this mess together. Overall this was a great movie. But its more so mystery, than horror, I have seen scarier, but the message and irony present in the movie, makes it a classic film. However, I will say the noise to voice ratio were a bit deviating.
Hope you enjoy this true review, and no I did not write the film, I am just a kid whos on winter break with nothing else better to do, then solve movies and write them on forums, because keeping them to myself bugs me.
MERRY CHRISTMAS.
I would like to write a movie however, I have so many good ideas, but I’m afraid someone will steal them, so I am going to keep my steven spieldberg mindset restrained, until the time is just, Amen