An American Haunting

An American Haunting

Starring Donald Sutherland, Sissy Spacek, Rachel Hurd-Wood, James D'Arcy

Directed by Courtney Solomon

Synopsis:
In the early 1800s, in a small town in Tennessee, one family is haunted by a vengeful spirit.  John Bell (Donald Sutherland) gave a bad deal to a woman in town who was rumored to be a witch, and she casts a curse on his family.  Soon after, his daughter Betsy (Rachel Hurd-Wood) begins getting attacked nightly by an unseen force.  Her mother, Lucy (Sissy Spacek) and father try in vain to stop it, even calling in the town's Professor Powell (James D'Arcy) to find some sort of logical explanation for everything, to no avail.

As the spirit amps up its attack on the family, old secrets come to the surface, and ultimately the question is asked whether the family had a curse placed on them - or if they're the ones causing the curse.

Review:
"An American Haunting" is "based" on a real-life event, where it is listed as the only case in American history of a ghost killing a human.  The actual facts behind this story have long since been lost to history, and even though a couple of books were written, they were done well after the supposed real events occurred, with little to no factual evidence.  Even rumors that Andrew Jackson visited the Bell house and witnessed the haunting are nothing more than that - there's been no material evidence of him ever even being in the area.

Back to the movie.  When you have a director whose only other known work is "Dungeons & Dragons," you're bound to expect something terrible.  Even with Golden Globe winner Donald Sutherland and Oscar winner Sissy Spacek couldn't save this non-horror horror.  Both actors seem to really phone in their performances here, with very little character development or even speaking roles.  Some of the supporting characters had more lines than they did.

The cinematography was something out of some high school production, showing events through the spirit's eyes as it whooshes and whips around the characters as they confusingly look around, and as an added "effect" the film would go from color to black and white to color and so on, for reasons unknown to mostly everyone.  It felt like how a mouse would feel on a mini roller coaster.  These scenes were numerous in the film, and added very little to the story if not to just elongate the already terribly short film.  The costumes and set design look like something the director found in the Dumpster of a local high school after one of their period piece performances.

The story fabricated for this film is an insult to the Bell family and their ancestors, especially the "shock" ending that seems tacked on and makes everything else you've watched moot.  I guess the only good thing this film had going for it is it's portrayal of America's first teacher-student relationship, as the school professor has a thing for his young student, which is something very taboo today but I guess in the 1800s it was morally acceptable.

In any event, this film could've been something great, but instead we're treated with another boring run-of-the-mill ghost story with a wannabe shock ending.

Summary:
If it were done better, this could've been a fantastic tale, but instead it's just another horror movie with very little horror.

My Rating: C+