The Legend of Lucy Keyes is set in the small rural New England community of Princeton where married couple Guy (Justin Theroux) & Jeanne Cooley (Julie Delpy) & their two young daughters Lucy (Cassidy Hinkle) & Molly (Kathleen Regan) have just moved into an old 18th Century farmhouse. Guy has been hired by Princeton mayor Samantha Porter (Brooke Adams) to develop a site & build eight alternative energy windmill turbines on it which has split the town down the middle, Porter stands to make over a million dollars if the deal & development goes ahead so pushes Guy. Meanwhile Jeanne digs into the history of the farmhouse & it's land & discovers that two hundred & fifty years ago a young girl named Lucy Keyes went missing & was never found, local legend says that her mother Marha can still be heard calling for Lucy even now...
Co-edited, written & directed by John Stimpson I have to say that this dull as dishwater rural drama with a hint of supernatural ghost story thrown nearly put me to sleep & I am actually quite surprised I made it all the way through to the end. The biggest problem with The Legend of Lucy Keyes is that fact that it's so slow, any slower & it would be going backwards with a script that doesn't even mention Lucy Keyes & her disappearance until after the forty minute mark. I have heard of build-up & scene setting but there's build-up & scene setting & just plain tedium where literally nothing happens for ages & The Legend of Lucy Keyes falls squarely into the tedious category as far as I am concerned. The script can't quite decide whether it wants to be a rural drama with the local opposition to the windmills & a subplot about the Mayor getting rich off the development or a proper supernatural mystery with the disappearance of Lucy Keyes that predictably is finally solved. The murder mystery at the end end starts & finishes within 30 seconds & the whole film is so lethargic & slow. The character's are stock ones with urban city folk moving to a rural area, the local scaremonger who talks of local legends, the odd local who is wary of strangers & the like. The mystery element just doesn't build that well, it's all too predictable & slow & at just over 90 minutes it feels like six hours.
Forget about any proper horror as there isn't any, there's a couple of flashbacks & one shot that might have been a ghost but otherwise the whole film is quite ambiguous as we are never sure what leads Lucy Cooley to find Lucy Keyes body or how the mayor died. The makers just seemed more interested in having Guy & Jeanne talk to people about nothing in particular, a lot. The whole film looks alright but there's no real style here or anything that memorable on show.
Filmed in 2004 but not released anywhere until 2006 one can understand why, actually shot in Princeton in Massachusetts. The acting is alright but nothing special, I take it Brooke Adams needed the money.
The Legend of Lucy Keyes is a film that I hated, it's so slow & predictable with a script that wavers between rural drama & supernatural mystery but doesn't satisfy on either count. For insomniacs only.
Co-edited, written & directed by John Stimpson I have to say that this dull as dishwater rural drama with a hint of supernatural ghost story thrown nearly put me to sleep & I am actually quite surprised I made it all the way through to the end. The biggest problem with The Legend of Lucy Keyes is that fact that it's so slow, any slower & it would be going backwards with a script that doesn't even mention Lucy Keyes & her disappearance until after the forty minute mark. I have heard of build-up & scene setting but there's build-up & scene setting & just plain tedium where literally nothing happens for ages & The Legend of Lucy Keyes falls squarely into the tedious category as far as I am concerned. The script can't quite decide whether it wants to be a rural drama with the local opposition to the windmills & a subplot about the Mayor getting rich off the development or a proper supernatural mystery with the disappearance of Lucy Keyes that predictably is finally solved. The murder mystery at the end end starts & finishes within 30 seconds & the whole film is so lethargic & slow. The character's are stock ones with urban city folk moving to a rural area, the local scaremonger who talks of local legends, the odd local who is wary of strangers & the like. The mystery element just doesn't build that well, it's all too predictable & slow & at just over 90 minutes it feels like six hours.
Forget about any proper horror as there isn't any, there's a couple of flashbacks & one shot that might have been a ghost but otherwise the whole film is quite ambiguous as we are never sure what leads Lucy Cooley to find Lucy Keyes body or how the mayor died. The makers just seemed more interested in having Guy & Jeanne talk to people about nothing in particular, a lot. The whole film looks alright but there's no real style here or anything that memorable on show.
Filmed in 2004 but not released anywhere until 2006 one can understand why, actually shot in Princeton in Massachusetts. The acting is alright but nothing special, I take it Brooke Adams needed the money.
The Legend of Lucy Keyes is a film that I hated, it's so slow & predictable with a script that wavers between rural drama & supernatural mystery but doesn't satisfy on either count. For insomniacs only.