SANTA BARBARA -- Bad things happen to good city folk when they move to the sticks -- a standard setup that unfolds with lukewarm results in "The Legend of Lucy Keyes".
Screenwriter-director John Stimpson constructs a contemporary mystery around documented events that took place 250 years ago in central Massachusetts, where he lives and, along with other residents, has experienced the presence of an otherworldly being. The good-looking, low-budget film, shot on digital high-def in Princeton, Mass., site of the titular legend, captures some of those chills. But it's neither chilling nor convincing enough to spell much of a theatrical future for "Lucy Keyes", which world-premiered recently at the Santa Barbara film fest.
Jeanne and Guy Cooley (Julie Delpy, Justin Theroux) are trying the rural life for two reasons: He has been hired by the bossy, patrician Samantha (Brooke Adams) to design a wind-power project, and, as the script gradually reveals, the Cooleys need a therapeutic change of scenery after the death of their youngest daughter. Tween Molly (Kathleen Regan) has little patience for her young sister, Lucy (Cassidy Hinkle), who takes a more impulsive approach to the former farm they are inhabiting, quickly connecting with something unseen.
Hinkle has large, striking eyes like Delpy, whose Jeanne is ultra-alert to rattling doors and apparitions and in some ways as ethereal a presence as the ghost she senses. But while her disconnect from Guy (a natural performance by Theroux) makes sense, the tension between them reads as lack of chemistry.
Guy laughs off the ghost tales while dealing with local resistance to the windmills. According to chief opponent Gretchen Caswell (Jamie Donnelly), they would disturb the sacred site on Wachusett Mountain where Martha Keyes still searches for her daughter Lucy, who disappeared there in 1755. Taking a less reasoned tack, emotionally unstable farmer Jonas Dodd Mark Boone Junior) deploys foul-smelling clam bellies and bloody pig heads in a subtle effort to discourage his neighbors from getting too comfy.
Although Stimpson's depiction of Lucy and Jeanne's restless nights is not very original, he does tap into the intense mother-daughter bond at the heart of this haunting. Present-day mother and daughter uncover a centuries-old New England version of the Hatfields and McCoys, the revelations building toward a credulity-taxing climax.
Screenwriter-director John Stimpson constructs a contemporary mystery around documented events that took place 250 years ago in central Massachusetts, where he lives and, along with other residents, has experienced the presence of an otherworldly being. The good-looking, low-budget film, shot on digital high-def in Princeton, Mass., site of the titular legend, captures some of those chills. But it's neither chilling nor convincing enough to spell much of a theatrical future for "Lucy Keyes", which world-premiered recently at the Santa Barbara film fest.
Jeanne and Guy Cooley (Julie Delpy, Justin Theroux) are trying the rural life for two reasons: He has been hired by the bossy, patrician Samantha (Brooke Adams) to design a wind-power project, and, as the script gradually reveals, the Cooleys need a therapeutic change of scenery after the death of their youngest daughter. Tween Molly (Kathleen Regan) has little patience for her young sister, Lucy (Cassidy Hinkle), who takes a more impulsive approach to the former farm they are inhabiting, quickly connecting with something unseen.
Hinkle has large, striking eyes like Delpy, whose Jeanne is ultra-alert to rattling doors and apparitions and in some ways as ethereal a presence as the ghost she senses. But while her disconnect from Guy (a natural performance by Theroux) makes sense, the tension between them reads as lack of chemistry.
Guy laughs off the ghost tales while dealing with local resistance to the windmills. According to chief opponent Gretchen Caswell (Jamie Donnelly), they would disturb the sacred site on Wachusett Mountain where Martha Keyes still searches for her daughter Lucy, who disappeared there in 1755. Taking a less reasoned tack, emotionally unstable farmer Jonas Dodd Mark Boone Junior) deploys foul-smelling clam bellies and bloody pig heads in a subtle effort to discourage his neighbors from getting too comfy.
Although Stimpson's depiction of Lucy and Jeanne's restless nights is not very original, he does tap into the intense mother-daughter bond at the heart of this haunting. Present-day mother and daughter uncover a centuries-old New England version of the Hatfields and McCoys, the revelations building toward a credulity-taxing climax.
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