THE BELL WITCH HAUNTING is based on an actual Southern legend, a story about a supernatural entity haunting a property back in the early 1800s when it belonged to someone by the name of John Bell (which, incidentally, is also the name of a well-known physicist who discovered a way to show that a particular phenomenon called quantum entanglement is, indeed, the closest that anything in physics comes to magic, but I digress). The Sawyer family moves into a house that turns out to be that very property, and from the first day they move in, strange and gruesome events happen.
As found footage movies go, the production values of this film were not too bad. However, seldom have I seen a movie that was this sloppily directed. The action takes place in rural Tennessee ("out in the woods" as a character says), but not a single Southern accent is heard anywhere. The cop's timeline inexplicably goes back 2 hours, the camera records obvious paranormal events without anybody doing anything about it, bodies pile up for no reason and without alarming anybody, a time card reads "January 21th, 2011", two (!) corpses blink, a person who beats someone to a bloody pulp ends up with spot-free clothing, a person shoots themselves in the mouth and dies with no visible signs, and on and on.
The sloppiness even extends to the plot: in one scene, the son hears scratches on the basement wall and sees naked wet footprints on the ground, but later reports only the former, which is obviously much easier to explain away. He also finds out about the haunting roughly midway through, but inexplicably does not tell his parents. The dad becomes temporarily possessed by the witch, and after he comes back, he pretty much acts as if nothing happened, and so on.
Because of all this sloppiness it is hard to tell whether a repeated sequence of 911 calls by the mom which end up bringing out the same cop several times throughout the movie is intended as a running gag for comic relief or just reflects directorial incompetence.
Even disregarding the sloppiness, the movie is below average: the plot is derivative, formulaic and nonsensical at the same time, which is quite an accomplishment. Finally, the witch is shown by the middle of the movie to be so overwhelmingly powerful that no suspense or tension can be built up. This raises the question of why she did not just use her powers right after the first warning and spare the audience a good hour.
This is bottom barrel stuff. Avoid.
As found footage movies go, the production values of this film were not too bad. However, seldom have I seen a movie that was this sloppily directed. The action takes place in rural Tennessee ("out in the woods" as a character says), but not a single Southern accent is heard anywhere. The cop's timeline inexplicably goes back 2 hours, the camera records obvious paranormal events without anybody doing anything about it, bodies pile up for no reason and without alarming anybody, a time card reads "January 21th, 2011", two (!) corpses blink, a person who beats someone to a bloody pulp ends up with spot-free clothing, a person shoots themselves in the mouth and dies with no visible signs, and on and on.
The sloppiness even extends to the plot: in one scene, the son hears scratches on the basement wall and sees naked wet footprints on the ground, but later reports only the former, which is obviously much easier to explain away. He also finds out about the haunting roughly midway through, but inexplicably does not tell his parents. The dad becomes temporarily possessed by the witch, and after he comes back, he pretty much acts as if nothing happened, and so on.
Because of all this sloppiness it is hard to tell whether a repeated sequence of 911 calls by the mom which end up bringing out the same cop several times throughout the movie is intended as a running gag for comic relief or just reflects directorial incompetence.
Even disregarding the sloppiness, the movie is below average: the plot is derivative, formulaic and nonsensical at the same time, which is quite an accomplishment. Finally, the witch is shown by the middle of the movie to be so overwhelmingly powerful that no suspense or tension can be built up. This raises the question of why she did not just use her powers right after the first warning and spare the audience a good hour.
This is bottom barrel stuff. Avoid.