An American HauntingSpooky moments hacked together  May 9,
2006 5:34:44 PM
|
THE EXORCIST WITH BONNETS AND BUGGIES: An American Haunting
|
Like The Amityville Horror, Courtney Solomon’s dim-lit, pioneer period fright fest clings to its “based on true events” tag, otherwise no one would care. The spooking takes place in an early 1880s Tennessee settlement after John Bell (Donald Sutherland), a man of stature, gets into a land dispute with a reputed witch. Doors slam in the Bells’ quaint farmhouse and their daughter, Betsy (Rachel Hurd-Wood), gets hung in the air and bitch-slapped by an invisible specter. It’s The Exorcist with bonnets and buggies. Solomon, whose only other credit is Dungeons & Dragons, hacks together one spooky moment after another — and they often, and annoyingly, turn out to be dream sequences. He also puts to sleep Sutherland and Sissy Spacek (as the mother). Hurd-Wood gives it a gutsy go, even as the hokum implodes. If that’s not enough to scare you off, the final twist that carries through to the present day will put your hair on end.
|
 |
Vote now in over 100 categories including the best local restaurants, comedian, filmmaker, performance artist, and yoga studio
Vote now in over 100 categories including the best local jukebox, bartender, dance club, and tattoo shop
Vote now in over 100 categories including best beer selection, bike route, gallery, and movie house
|
- Fans are paying the price for the Sox success: inside the Fenway fiasco
- The soap-operatic significance of the Bay Guardian–Village Voice Media battle
- Some Things at Trinity
- Never mind its tough-girl alt-porn feminism: SuicideGirls has already moved on to a new generation
- The Big Hurt: Trent Reznor pushes the premium fabric-bound envelope
- The first political leader of my generation acts nothing like the rest of us — which might be how he’s gotten where he is
- Fans are paying the price for the Sox success: inside the Fenway fiasco
- Meet Adam Gaffin, Boston’s reigning Web czar
- The Clean House at New Rep; Gary at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre
- The soap-operatic significance of the Bay Guardian–Village Voice Media battle
- Teatro Lirico I at the Majestic Theatre, March 2, 2008
- The first political leader of my generation acts nothing like the rest of us — which might be how he’s gotten where he is
|
-
Another Martin Lawrence shtick
-
A chilling gangland epic
-
A grand idea
-
A step ahead of the rest
-
A rich kid on the road to comeuppance
-
Ever shirtless, ever silly
-
Oodles of fun
-
Inadvertent camp
-
No pulse
-
A humorless turd
|
- Artfully done soap opera
- Courage and naïveté
- Art vis-à-vis life
- The world of half-baked ideas
- A Karate Kid ripoff
- Far out "history"
- Good-natured, egalitarian, and mildly stupid
- Van Sant takes time for a ride in Paranoid Park
- Another Martin Lawrence shtick
- Not worth the Oscar
|
|
|
|