During
present day a teenager has nightmares
about evil hauntings while her mother
reads an old letter from her ancestor
Lucy Bell (Sissy Spacek) in 1817 as there
was a dispute between lands that Lucy's
husband John (Donald Sutherland) won over
at their church.
The other resident who lost this battle
named Kathe Batts (Gaye Brown) was
outraged by this and swears that they
will be cursed as she has a fame of being
a witch.
While hunting, John is nearly attacked by
a pack of wolves plus his family is
threatened by strange sounds and going
on's in their house.
Suddenly an evil spirit attacks John and
Lucy's eldest daughter Betsy (Rachel
Hurd-Wood) as she is mysteriously slapped
and dragged around as well as having
horrible nightmares.
Betsy's schoolteacher Richard Powell
(James D'Arcy) tries to help out with
this problem by finding rational
explanations for the cause of this and
brings a group of people to try to
exorcise the house and to protect her but
nothing seems to work.
This was a very
different style of a horror film mixed
with drama and very original too based on
true events.
Sometimes the story is a bit slow but the
performances were dynamic as it earned 3
bats for that.
It does make you cringe wondering if this
can happen to your family if someone
wants to get even with you.
The acting is
extremely great as we get a nice
performance by Donald Sutherland
as an aggressive father and he knows how
to portray a person almost losing his
sanity from the madness going on.
We see Sissy Spacek in a horror
flick again after Carrie
and boy does she ever play a totally
different role in this one as a caring
and protective mother. She makes you want
to help her out with the issue going on
she pulls this role so well but of course
Sissy is brilliant alltogether
in any show she does.
James D'Arcy performs nicely as
a school teacher trying to help out the
issue and shows great energy.
Rachel Hurd-Wood was terrific
bringing her character to life and she
can really go places with future work.
The directing is
totally amazing by Courtney Solomon
as he makes alot of scenes very eerie.
He was perfect at directing Gaye
Brown when she loses her court case
as she makes out that she is going to
psysically hurt Donald Sutherland's
character with her aggressive looks and
speaking but she doesn't
There's also great hallucinations with
wolves attacking too.
His best work was with young actress Rachel
Hurd-Wood with the spirits attacking
her and directing her intensity and
aggressions during this event almost
making it hard to watch.
He also shows nice scenery of the wind
storms in the forest too.
Caine Davidson composes
some soft music with chanting sounds for
some of the quiet moments and has intense
scenes for the haunting moments. Not too
bad.
John
Bell: You were always a sound
sleeper.
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