"Based on true events..." "Inspired by a true story..." However you phrase it, one key word always manages to make horror more horrific: true. Sit back and relax as we take a look at some movies based upon the strange, bizarre, and weird.
Sure, much horror carrying the "true story" tag is only loosely based on actual events. Just think of how many extremely different envisionings of the Ed Gein story there are. Everything from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre to The Silence of the Lambs and hundreds in-between trace their roots to that twisted Wisconsin deviant. But there's just something about knowing even a modicum of the heinous tale unfolding on the screen before your eyes is true that makes it that much more chilling.
Now, say your film is not only based on a true story, but one which involves supernatural, unexplainable events. Now you're really onto something.
Sure, much horror carrying the "true story" tag is only loosely based on actual events. Just think of how many extremely different envisionings of the Ed Gein story there are. Everything from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre to The Silence of the Lambs and hundreds in-between trace their roots to that twisted Wisconsin deviant. But there's just something about knowing even a modicum of the heinous tale unfolding on the screen before your eyes is true that makes it that much more chilling.
Now, say your film is not only based on a true story, but one which involves supernatural, unexplainable events. Now you're really onto something.
- 8/24/2012
- by Doctor Gash
- DreadCentral.com
Translating a legendary ghost story to the screen, writer-director Courtney Solomon crafts a quality horror piece from strong performances and effects. The chief disappointment of "An American Haunting" is that it doesn't exploit more opportunities for the sublime subtlety of performances by Sissy Spacek and, especially, Donald Sutherland as parents whose home is besieged by a sadistic poltergeist. Favoring genre thrills, the film gives the psychological aspect of the tale shorter shrift than it deserves. Still, pedigreed casting will entice audiences not usually drawn to horror, who will find something of substance shoring up the shocks.
Based on Brent Monahan's novel "The Bell Witch" -- one of many books about the only U.S. case that officially attributed a man's death to a spirit -- the film uses a present-day framing device in which an adolescent girl is haunted by nightmares of an invisible intruder after discovering an old journal.
The story on the journal's pages opens in 1817, when things start going bump in the night at the Bell family's Red River, Tenn., home. Things also start sobbing and pulling covers off beds. The entity targets teen daughter Betsy (Rachel Hurd-Wood, who made an impressive big-screen debut in 2003's "Peter Pan"), dragging her around by her hair and slapping her senseless. When Betsy screams for her level-headed mother, Lucy (Spacek), Hurd-Wood delivers not the usual damsel-in-distress shrieks but dire, depths-of-the-soul wails. As Betsy's father, also singled out for demonic doings, Sutherland has a spooked look about him. A respected man in the community, he's been censured by the church for usury and, falling ill, seems resigned to his fate.
Documenting the unsettling events in his journal is Betsy's initially skeptical teacher (James D'Arcy), whose attraction to the girl is encouraged by Lucy for grim reasons made clear in the film's final moments. That revelation, though no flat-out surprise, might draw some filmgoers back for second viewings. It will make others wish Solomon had offered more character interplay amid the atmospherics.
Pulse-quickening elements abound, from cinematographer Adrian Biddle's demon's-eye-view camerawork, in wintry Bucharest and Montreal locations, to the dynamic sound design and Caine Davidson's score. But the scares grow repetitious when they should compound the psychological violence of a truly chilling tale.
Based on Brent Monahan's novel "The Bell Witch" -- one of many books about the only U.S. case that officially attributed a man's death to a spirit -- the film uses a present-day framing device in which an adolescent girl is haunted by nightmares of an invisible intruder after discovering an old journal.
The story on the journal's pages opens in 1817, when things start going bump in the night at the Bell family's Red River, Tenn., home. Things also start sobbing and pulling covers off beds. The entity targets teen daughter Betsy (Rachel Hurd-Wood, who made an impressive big-screen debut in 2003's "Peter Pan"), dragging her around by her hair and slapping her senseless. When Betsy screams for her level-headed mother, Lucy (Spacek), Hurd-Wood delivers not the usual damsel-in-distress shrieks but dire, depths-of-the-soul wails. As Betsy's father, also singled out for demonic doings, Sutherland has a spooked look about him. A respected man in the community, he's been censured by the church for usury and, falling ill, seems resigned to his fate.
Documenting the unsettling events in his journal is Betsy's initially skeptical teacher (James D'Arcy), whose attraction to the girl is encouraged by Lucy for grim reasons made clear in the film's final moments. That revelation, though no flat-out surprise, might draw some filmgoers back for second viewings. It will make others wish Solomon had offered more character interplay amid the atmospherics.
Pulse-quickening elements abound, from cinematographer Adrian Biddle's demon's-eye-view camerawork, in wintry Bucharest and Montreal locations, to the dynamic sound design and Caine Davidson's score. But the scares grow repetitious when they should compound the psychological violence of a truly chilling tale.
- 11/9/2005
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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