The Haunting of Helena

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The Haunting of Helena
Starring Harriet MacMasters-Green, Sabrina Jolie Perez, Jarreth Merz, Matt Patresi
Directed by Christian Bisceglia & Ascanio Malgarini

Sophia (Harriet MacMasters-Green) takes her daughter Helena (Sabrina Jolie Perez) to Italy to get away from her estranged husband Robert (Jarreth Merz).  They move into a creepy apartment and soon after Helena loses a tooth, and is visited by the tooth fairy.  Then, after a car accident, Helena loses the tooth and demands Sophia find it.  Soon after, Helena is visited by the tooth fairy a lot, demanding more teeth.  At first Sophia thinks it's just her imagination, but when she sees the tooth fairy too, she's frightened at what she wants.

Sophia digs into the history of the apartment and finds that the "tooth fairy" isn't a fairy at all, but rather the spirit of a woman whose husband killed her - after removing all her teeth.  She thinks that by getting the woman's original teeth back to her will stop her from haunting her child, but is she just making things worse?

The best part of this movie is the ending.  Not the first ending, nor the "surprise after ending," but the "SURPRISE after after ending."  But even that doesn't make up for the insane, totally nonsensical mash-up of previous horror films that was seen earlier.

Terribly mixing films like "Darkness Falls" and "The Ring" in a wannabe Guillermo del Toro style film drowns out the terror the film is supposed to portray.  Helena is hardly even seen, as her mother plays detective the whole time, and does a terrible job at it.  Plus her accent is so thick you can barely understand what she's saying.  There is a few bright lights (such as the car wreck scene and a scene with Helena in the hospital), but, as said before, they don't make up for the remainder of the film which, if you're even a general horror fan, you can see coming a mile away.

My Rating: C-

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