Sub-Genre- Teen Romance
Cast Members of Note- The hotness of Haley Bennett, an old favorite of mine Jake Weber, and Nina Siemaszko.
Molly Hartley (and everyone else in the film), is a girl that's scared by everything; running into people, alarm clocks, a cool autumn breeze... even the mail! She yelps quite often to voice her displeasure too. After having been stabbed in the chest by her
Mom, really odd and terrifying things begin to happen to her: random nosebleeds; odd headaches; non-threatening creepy whispers seem to follow her around wherever she goes; bad
PMS symptoms; everyone randomly jumping out at her and trying to make her pee her pants... now this is
Horror!
Luckily at her
School, all of the students are or were at one time
CW Actors, and look like either
Zach Efron, or any of the chicks from
High School Musical... or,
One Tree Hill... or,
The O.C.... or, the deepest recesses of my fucking nightmares. Even
Molly's dad has a frigging
Emo-looking haircut... is no one safe?
The
Horror escalates to turning off haunted faucets, and staring blankly into mirrors, and we're left to wonder if
Molly Hartley can ever survive such terrifying peril?!? -JUMP SCARE! Oh shit! Sorry, that one got me.
I'm not going to say anymore, because I really don't understand what the hell happened from here on out.
 |
| What happened? |
There's nothing good about this movie. I'm usually not one for spoilers, but screw it; read on knowing that there are spoilers ahead, although oddly enough they won't spoil a thing because there isn't really anything to spoil.
First of all, let's be clear on one point; this movie contains no
Haunting whatsoever.
Satan is mentioned, and we hear whispering voices, but none of it is even close to resembling a
Haunting. Not in the least. Then again, this movie doesn't contain one moment of
Suspense or
Horror either (save for
Molly being stabbed by her
Mom), and a bunch of cheap scare tactics don't count. This is nothing more than a
High School drama, plain and simple.
 |
| Someone should have done this to the writer and director of this movie. *Figuratively, of course. |
There are actually points in the movie (most of the middle and the very end, to be precise), that absolutely seem to abandon the
Horror movie road altogether. It's almost a waste of my time trying to explain the movie and its shortcomings to those who haven't seen it, but...
We gather early on that when
Molly Hartley turns 18, something bad is going to happen, and that's why her
Mother tried to kill her. Unfortunately, we never find out exactly what happens; she just turns 18, and locks her
Dad up in the loony bin and says "It's for the best." Then, she graduates valedictorian of her class, gives a speech about destiny, and the credits roll. I'm not being dismissive here either; absolutely nothing happens.
It's no surprise that the film's Director has never directed a film before, and even less of a surprise after seeing
Molly Hartley, is the fact that he was executive producer on the
WB teen romance show,
Everwood (which, for the record, I actually liked.) The people who wrote/directed/produced this movie have
NO CLUE what
Horror is, and should just stick to lame tween romance projects.
 |
| Alexis White isn't the only thing missing here... |
Three fake scares in the first five minutes alone! All in the same scene! Ooh, and a scary "just a dream" gag! Another fake scare! Here's another one, and were not even to the 15 minute mark yet. A bird, a boyfriend, a dad, a kid at school, a bathroom stall door, a frigging alarm clock... Jump cuts, fake scares, whispers and the like are not what make a movie scary guys, especially when you use them every 34 seconds.
Not only was the plot ridiculous, and the build up to the end shoddy at best, but when we finally get there, nothing happens. Absolutely
NOTHING. We get no clue as to what
Molly has become or what it all means, only that she's 18 now, and it means something. Maybe.
Molly Hartley popped a nosebleed? They cut out most of the scene of
Molly being stabbed by her
Mother, which I thought was a main point of the story, but why bother to keep the only interesting element of your film, in the actual film. I have a feeling that a lot was cut from this movie though.
 |
| Not in the movie. |
No.
" I can't let you turn 18!"
Not a damn thing.
This movie can truly suck it.
Not even some superb ass and titties (ass, ass, and titties) could make this movie watchable.
Sounds pretty bad.
ReplyDeleteholy shit this movie was so bad!
ReplyDeleteSaying it was bad doesn't mow it down far enough. I picked this out for my GF at the video store knowing nothing about it. I thought it may run along the same lines as American Haunting or The Exorcism of Emily Rose... nothing too fancy, but enough to pass the night.
Man was I wrong...
And you're right...that scary face in the mirror got me too...then the rest of the movie goes to hell. And what the hell happened in the end?
But for some reason I wanted to stick with it and kept telling my self "Somethings bound to happen..." Cause of all the 'build up'
nope...nothing... avoid at all costs indeed!
On a slightly different note...have you seen "May"
I got my own copy of that yesterday from a video store that was closing down... and man it was awesome. I remember seeing it back in high school... but i forgot how cool it was.
ok...my super long comment ends here.