An American Haunting - Originally posted 11 May 2006

There is this lovely place here in Indy called Hollywood Bar & Filmworks (note from the copy time: :'( too bad the place doesn't exist anymore) where, during the week, because of where I work, I can get a total of 4 tickets for free to go see a movie. So we figured that we would go se An American Haunting this week. We thought that it was a little weird that they were already showing the movie, as they usually buy reels once the major theaters don't show the movie as much... and this movie was released last Friday.

The critics on www.rottentomatoes.com gave it a 16% fresh... which means that it's a rotten tomatoe but I usually don't trust critics; they are needlessly negative. I go to the movies to be entertained, not to see the movie of the century every time. And I'm easily entertained... ;o) The users gave it a 50% fresh so I figured that, at the worst, we would get a great Godiva white chocolate shake.

The shake was awesome and, as usual, the company of our best friend Jen was great. Poor girl had lost her voice to a bad cold, though, but she was still somewhat in a good mood.

Am I forgetting something?

Oh yeah! The movie.

Well, maybe the critics were right. The story was just plain bad. It started very slow, as horror movies often do, and then the pace picked up and it was getting more entertaining, to the point where I wanted to know what the resolution was going to be... but it trailed on... and on... I remember singing to my hubby "We want resolution" (for those who know Covenant, the industrial band, that's one of the lines at one point in the song "We want revolution."). And then they wrapped it up lamely in 2 minutes... as if they suddenly had dried out all their budget.

I won't tell the surprise ending but I wish that they would have put a few more hints as to what it was. There were some hints but there could have been a little bit more so that the ending wouldn't have looked as fishy and lame. To me, it seemed as though they aimed for an M. Nigh Shamalan twist at the end but completely botched it.

Oh and the director of the movie was the same guy who did the sacrilegeous Dungeons & Dragons movie. It was sacrilegeous because everyone who has played D&D knows that you need your party to be able to go through the adventure or else you will die. Well, the D&D movie was more heroesque than it should have been. And the acting was bad.

Being who I am, I didn't hold the director's past sins against him and, while An American Haunting was much better, it wasn't all that good. And you could tell that it's the same guy: he has a fascination with showing the building over and over and over again with the camera zooming in and kind of turning at the same time. He did that in D&D too. But, in that movie, we thought that it was because the special effects of the castle had cost so much that he wanted to have more bang for his bucks.

It was very very sad for me to see awesome actors do their best to make this movie good. Sissy Spacek and Donald Sutherland were very good. Actually, all of the acting was very good. So it was really a shame, imho, to see all that talent go to waste. It just was a bad story. Or maybe more acurately a story badly shown.

So. If you have absolutely nothing to do and are bored out of your socks, go see that movie. Or wait until it plays on TV on the Sci-Fi channel around midnight on a Saturday night in a couple of years.

:(

Comments I had received

From Haifa:
What a total bummer! I too wanted to see this movie. I like a good old fashioned horror/spooky/ghost movie without all the blood and guts (although not sure if thats what this movie was supposed to be or not) I too do not trust the critics because I've loved alot of movies they've hated. But if someone who has such similar tastes as I do, was dissapointed... well then, that pretty much seals the deal. Oh, btw, I agree with you about the D&D movie.

From me:
Yeah, I was expecting a horror flick of the spooky genre that would have weird stuff happening. While weird stuff was indeed happening, it wasn't spooky. :(

From Anaan:
We-ell... since it costs around $20 to see a movie here, I reckon I'll wait for TV - or at least for DVD. Thanks for the tip off :-) Anyway, speaking of M.Nigh Shamalan, doesn't he have a new movie out soon? Or maybe it's out already in the States - we have to wait forever for most films in Japan. Is it any good?

From Beth:
I heard that it was a true story. I was watching previews for it last night on TV and I saw an alien in like a bonnet. Everything looked scary but that part. I was by myself and cracking up. Isn't it about an pissed off alien spirit?

From me:
No, it's not about aliens. The little girl in the bonnet is really the spirit of someone very much human... only now it's distorted. Yeah, lots of people were cracking up during the movie so that was a bad sign!

From me:
Oh and... yes, it's supposed to be a true legend... it is supposed to be the only document event where a haunting led to a death.

From Heather:
Well dang, I was really hoping it'd be a good spooky movie (cause I love the spooky-type horror genre). At least you got to see it at Hollywood Bar & Filmworks so it wasn't completely a wash-out.