American Haunting

[Hanabishi Recca]

I saw the movie last week or so.

So, If you have seen it, I would like to hear your comments on it!
I would also enjoy if you would rate it and explain why you gave it the rating you did.

Me, personally liked to movie.
For the reason that it was amusing in a weird way.
I think it made a point that the mind is very powerful.
Yet I am almost posotive that some people are saying,
"It was just a movie." Yet it was 'just a movie'
it was based on a true story.

I would rate it alittler over average.
There were somethings that I really liked about the movie.

So, whats your opinion about the movie?

Thanks for your time,

David

[Papa Smurf]

I've got to tell ya, I thought American Haunting was awful. It easily ranks up there as one of the worst horror movies I've ever seen.

Donald Sutherland and Sissy Spacek are tremendous actors, but they had absolutely nothing to work with in that schlock. The writing was dreadful, the pacing was completely random. The characters were poorly conceived, too.

And the "twist ending" of the film was uninspired, trite, naive, and wholly annoying. You know it's really bad when I, one of the strongest opponents of cliches in writing, would have [i]preferred[/i] [spoiler]the witch actually having cursed the family[/spoiler], rather than what we were given as an explanation.

The flash forwards--the present day scenes--did absolutely nothing for the movie. They were just boring--laughably so, in fact.

And really, the entire movie was laughable. I was roaring during most of it, especially when [spoiler]the girl was getting slapped by the spirit[/spoiler]. That wasn't unsettling. That was hilarious. Same goes for anything where the wolf just pops out of nowhere. The characters are riding along, then suddenly, BAM! Wolf leaps out and gouges a throat! It was comedic gold, I swear.

Usually that would be a good thing, too. But not when the purpose of the movie was to fashion a serious horror movie.

I think the only truly good scares/unsettling things in the movie were [spoiler]when the spirit was attacking the girl[/spoiler], honestly. Even though they were just mildly compelling...even mildly compelling was a vast improvement over the rest of the movie.

The writer/director did the Dungeons and Dragons movie a few years ago. No wonder American Haunting was so awful.

Somehow, I think that if a different writer/director had done the movie, and we'd had an R rating, and we cut out all of the lame parts with the modern settings and stupid scares, and focused on the real meat of a haunting story for the entire movie...we might have had a good horror movie.

American Haunting suffers from similar problems that I saw in Exorcism of Emily Rose: it's too schizophrenic for its own good. But at least Emily Rose had some great scares with great cinematography.

American Haunting...didn't.