Films: 2000s
(2005) An American Haunting
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
An American Haunting
Director: Courtney Solomon
Release: 2005
Donald Sutherland and Rachel Hurd-Wood smolder on screen in "An American Haunting."
Given director Courtney Solomon's fairly heavy hand with visual representations of the haunting, the trio's performance balance (and in fact save) "An American Haunting." The net effect is a fairly tense and psychologically complex ghost story, packing a noteworthy twist at its ending and a deeper than pop-fare theme into its narrative.
Sutherland plays John Bell, patriarch of a Virginia family in 1818. Bell and his wife Lucy (Sissy Spacek) raise Betsy (Rachel Hurd-Wood) and John, Jr. (Thom Fell) in their rural house. John has made a grave error, however, and is convicted of usury in a loan to his neighbor.
The neighbor in question, Kathryn Batts (Gaye Brown) is rumored to be a witch. Whether she is, or whether she is only a victim of rumor, the Bells enter a two-year gauntlet in which their faith, lives and family are destroyed.
John and family first sight a lumbering black wolf on their property, its aggression unmatched by common specimen. At night, John roams the property, certain he hears intruders and that he sees someone on their roof in the darkness.
Betsy's affliction is more acute. At night, she is dragged from her bed, beaten by unseen hands and kept from help, even as her family struggles to pull her from midair.
A priest, James Johnston (Matthew Marsh), and a schoolteacher, Richard Powell (James D'Arcy), are brought into the house. The haunting confronts the adults directly, flouting their religion and their science, refocusing on John and running rampant over the Bells. John is driven to the brink of suicide and Betsy drifts through her sleepless world, visited by a silent bonneted little girl who leads her further from reality.
Solomon and co-writer, first-timer Brent Monahan, create a devastating cause for the haunting. Framed by contemporary scenes in which a 2005 Bell descendent discovers the writing of Richard Powell and the secret of the haunting, known later as the Bell Witch legend, "An American Haunting" leaves the sole province of ghosts and demons for something altogether more immediate and dangerous.
Solomon should be credited with using real life special effects to create his most dramatic scenes (in particular a spectacular carriage flip), but he falls victim to technology when it comes to Hurd-Wood's spectral assault.
On the other hand, he makes a particularly brave choice to inject a first-person perspective into the demonic presence, which, unlike Sam Raimi's "Evil Dead," never achieves a fisheye-lens comedic effect. Instead, it emphasizes the unknowable, and implicates the audience. When the film's plot twist is explicated, the association of viewer with the internal watcher of the film is well justified.
Sutherland is significant in "An American Haunting," a near-broken beast of burden who communicates a kind of mass that broadens the haunting from the spirit world to that of the family in the wilderness. Sutherland responds to the truth of the haunting with a kind of horrific honesty. "An American Haunting" paints human frailty in every hue of bruise blue, thanks to Solomon's ability to leave Sutherland in the lens with uncomfortable symbols, like a particular blood stain on a sheet.
Also of note is Hurd-Wood's ability to broadcast physical vulnerability, as well as composure, within the CGI environment she must endure. She joins "The Exorcism of Emily Rose" actress Jennifer Carpenter in overpowering special effects. She acts through broadly painted situations and successfully pitches the hardest-to-sell parts of "An American Haunting."
The film is not perfect. It succumbs to a certain modernist "show me, don't tell me" genre formula, but when it works (and it works best) in glimpses and reverse perspective float-throughs by the supernatural presence, a true landscape of uncertain and unsettling visuals is created. "An American Haunting" posits the concept that haunting is not necessarily from without, but also potentially from within. In the American family, "An American Haunting" (more than) suggests, is more than enough fuel for punitive spiritual horror.
If to frighten is one mandate of the horror film, "An American Haunting" delivers a spectrum of convincing moments. It's subtext is a bit too easily delivered, but Solomon's film admirably taps the guilt well of man-on-women, father-daughter power structure from a well of ghostly metaphor and family secret.
James O'Brien
Cinescare Staff
An American Haunting, 2005
Sutherland is significant in "An American Haunting," a near-broken beast of burden who communicates a kind of mass that broadens the haunting from the spirit world to that of the family in the wilderness.
