Film Review
An American Haunting
Dir. Courtney SolomonScr. Brent Monahan, Courtney Solomon
Donald Sutherland
Sissy Spacek
Rachel Hurd-Wood
James D?Arcy
Matthew Marsh
Official Site - www.anamericanhauntingonline.com
An American Haunting is a bit more ambitious than your average horror film. The film attempts to offer an explanation of the "Most Documented Haunting in American History" the Bell Witch Haunting.
The claims that a few individual journals written 30-40 years after the incidents occurred are enough documentation to qualify as "Most Documented" seems dubious. But I guess that is what many people say of the gospels. In the style of the Blair Witch Project and The Da Vinci Code, the film works better if you are forced to consider that it might actually be true.
The story is told as a flashback from an old letter found by new owners in the attic of the Old Bell House where the original hauntings took place. It is never clear if the modern characters are decendants of the Bell family but a few parallels point in that direction. Although there are a few very startling moments, the strange events become repetitive rather quickly. Donald Sutherland and Sissy Spacek are the two most established faces in the film but Rachel Hurd-Wood(Peter Pan) is the star of this movie. Her role demanded many odd facial expressions and unnatural limb twisting, which she executed flawlessly.
The most striking element of the film is that it offers an interesting view of paranormal events. The movie closes with a definition of the word Poltergeist--"a term for a supposed spirit or ghost that manifests by moving and influencing inanimate objects or levitating people. "Then the onscreen text suggests that these objects are actually being influenced by something unknown within people who are traumatized.
I won't spoil the details of what kinds of trauma might explain the Bell Witch incident. It is an interesting suggestion that the people who experience hauntings are actually creating these paranormal events themselves due to the release, through trauma, of deeper human abilities that are normally dormant. The people are so convinced that they are experiencing a ghost because they have no awareness of their own power to trigger supernatural events. Although the movie was well produced, I feel that this little suggestion is its strongest merit.
The claims that a few individual journals written 30-40 years after the incidents occurred are enough documentation to qualify as "Most Documented" seems dubious. But I guess that is what many people say of the gospels. In the style of the Blair Witch Project and The Da Vinci Code, the film works better if you are forced to consider that it might actually be true.
The story is told as a flashback from an old letter found by new owners in the attic of the Old Bell House where the original hauntings took place. It is never clear if the modern characters are decendants of the Bell family but a few parallels point in that direction. Although there are a few very startling moments, the strange events become repetitive rather quickly. Donald Sutherland and Sissy Spacek are the two most established faces in the film but Rachel Hurd-Wood(Peter Pan) is the star of this movie. Her role demanded many odd facial expressions and unnatural limb twisting, which she executed flawlessly.
The most striking element of the film is that it offers an interesting view of paranormal events. The movie closes with a definition of the word Poltergeist--"a term for a supposed spirit or ghost that manifests by moving and influencing inanimate objects or levitating people. "Then the onscreen text suggests that these objects are actually being influenced by something unknown within people who are traumatized.
I won't spoil the details of what kinds of trauma might explain the Bell Witch incident. It is an interesting suggestion that the people who experience hauntings are actually creating these paranormal events themselves due to the release, through trauma, of deeper human abilities that are normally dormant. The people are so convinced that they are experiencing a ghost because they have no awareness of their own power to trigger supernatural events. Although the movie was well produced, I feel that this little suggestion is its strongest merit.