Things Heard and Seen

Things Heard and Seen
Starring Amanda Seyfried, James Norton, Natalia Dyer, Alex Neustaedter
Directed by Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini

In "Things Seen and Heard," one of the side characters works at a prestigious college as an "adjunct weaving professor" who really enjoys sewing, and in a way the film itself is a scarf in and of itself - one that starts off very tight, professionally woven, and filled with intricate beauty that keeps you drawn to it as the scarf progresses, hoping that the final sewn moments will be as wonderful as the first. Unfortunately, this "weaving professor" of a film decides to just unspool their efforts so by the end it's just a load of useless strings that lead absolutely nowhere, leaving you scratching your head in wonder as to how something with so much potential can be utterly wasted.

Catherine Claire (Amanda Seyfried) and her professor husband George (James Norton) decide to move to the countryside of New York with their young daughter after George gets a job as an adjunct professor at a university. They decide to purchase a house built in the eighteenth century, and almost immediately Claire and her daughter begin hearing and seeing things around the house. Claire begins to investigate and learn the house's bloody history, while George begins showing his true colors as he begins an affair with a student, and falls into more and more immorality in every aspect of his life, creating a rift between the young couple. Is it just marital problems or are there some unseen evil forces in the house that's affecting the current residents?

"Things Heard and Seen" begins as your typical haunted house movie, and checks off every itemized note off the generic haunted house list: a young family? check. Moving to an old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere? Check. Said house has a history of murder and death? Check. They begin seeing and hearing explainable things that slowly escalate? Check. The marriage begins deteriorating, leading both parties to partake in immoral decisions? Check. Film's denouement is a balls-to-the-wall supernatural experience? Well...not so much.

The film does an alright job at the supernatural element, but there's surprisingly few scares that are delivered. Instead, the film centers on the marital troubles of Catherine and George, two characters who seemingly flip-flop throughout the film but ultimately serve as two characters we couldn't care less about. At the start, Catherine is a shy, timid woman with an eating disorder who will do whatever her husband wants and act blindly to see to his every need, but as she moves into the new house and learns of the spirits who live within, she begins to come to her own and stands up to her philandering husband and finds an inner strength within. On the opposite end, George starts off the film with a suave arrogance that's increasingly annoying as the film progresses, as he thinks he can never get caught in any of his misdeeds because he's way smarter than everyone else. Yet, again, as the film progresses, he begins unraveling and making messy mistakes that threatens his idyllic existence. And again, we really don't care.

Oscar-nominee Amanda Seyfried looks like she's straining to really care about the project, as you can see in her eyes not just the sense of loss for the character, but a loss for what she's really trying to convey. James Norton seems to relish being the ultimate jerk, which doesn't make him at all sympathetic. Throw in these performances together and you got a film that you wished - in a flip from the title - was a thing not heard and not seen.

The film is a little over two hours long, which in a cynical mind is two hours too long, but to treat it a bit more fairly could've been slimmed down by at least thirty minutes to be more appropriate. The slow buildup was somewhat well done, if not formulaic, but then the final twenty minutes it seemed like the writers, directors, and actors just decided to "yeet" out and release visual carnage that's baffling to say the least and an insult to say the worst, a spit in the face for anyone who devoted their hard-earned time to find a somewhat logical conclusion. Some bad endings can be forgiven, but this one is wholly unforgivable, a time-wasting effort that makes you wonder who greenlights such trainwrecks in the first place.

Uninspired, insipid, and way too long, "Things Heard and Seen" had promise at the start but slowly unraveled to a jumbled mess whose ending is a complete dumpster fire of a disaster that makes you wonder why anyone even tried to make this film in the first place.

The Score: D-