An American Haunting (2005)

Cast: Donald Sutherland (John Bell), Sissy Spacek (Lucy Bell), James D'Arcy (Richard Powell), Rachel Hurd- Wood (Betsy Bell)

Director: Courtney Solomon

Genre: Thriller/ Mystery

I don’t know whether taking a perfectly well written ghost story and then completely ruining it can be called entertainment. I was drawn in right away with this ghost story- supposedly a true story- until they made it into “nothing that science can’t explain” propaganda. How American! The atheists in Hollywood weren’t fooling anyone here. First, they tell the audience that the events in the movie were based true occurrences. Ok! That’s kinda cool! But then, in a stupid effort at a twist of plot, they leave the audience with a lame explanation on how a spirit can kill a person despite such phenomenon as disembodied voices, a young girl levitating in mid air and getting viciously beat up by an invisible force in front of witnesses. Their lame explanation wasn’t worth the $7.50 I paid to see this massacre of a ghost story. The story is taken from a death account in 1818 that’s supposedly the only known case where a spirit was responsible for a death. A family member of the Bell family living in modern times discovers a manuscript by a teacher who had recorded strange events surrounding the Bell’s during the 1800’s. This takes us into the actual story. The Bell family of Tennessee find themselves suddenly tormented by a poltergeist immediately after Mr. Bell (Donald Sutherland) is taken to court on usury charges. The evil spirit seems to focus on the family’s youngest daughter, Betsy (Rachel Hurd- Wood). It manifests itself through strange voices, severe beatings, and other basic typical poltergeist activity. The family tries to search for logical explanations for this phenomenon but to no avail. It eventually turns out that the source of this haunting is from the person they least expect (how typical). The acting of both Donald Sutherland and Sissy Spacek (Lucy Bell) do not make up for the downhill plummet of this movie. If the writers wanted to keep a good thing going, they should have written a much more appropriate ending that was not mere propaganda. It could have been a good old- fashioned American ghost story. Instead, it turned out to be a good old- fashioned inadvertent bow to science story.
The special effects were good and the story grabbed your attention right away but that’s all that I can say about it. It also had more jump scenes than you could shake a stick at, if that’s your idea of a good time. I thought the acting went pretty well, especially on the part of Sutherland and Spacek. Was it scary? Well, it was in the long run despite the ending. All in all, it was just another attempt for the idiots in Hollywood to explain something they know nothing about.