rochefort [Film Festival 03.20.12] horror thriller



Year: 2011
Directors: Eduardo Sanchez
Writers: Eduardo Sanchez & Jamie Nash
IMDB: link
Trailer: link
Review by: rochefort
Rating: 7 out of 10

The latest film from "Blair Witch Project" co-director Eduardo Sanchez, "Lovely Molly" is an unexpectedly gripping horror film that is part possession story and partly about the regression of a drug addict.


Soon after the newly-married Molly (Gretchen Lodge) and Tim (Johnny Lewis) move into Molly's childhood home, creepy noises begin to emanate nightly from the basement. Molly, an ex-junkie, knows her truck-driver husband can't afford to stay at home night after night, so she decides to be brave and deal with the increasingly unsettling phenomena, even though she suspects that her troubled family life may have left some dark psychological residue in the house. NIght after night the events become more intense and exhausting, chipping away at her sanity and prompting her to return to drugs for fleeting comfort.

The latest film from "Blair Witch Project" co-director Eduardo Sanchez, "Lovely Molly" is an unexpectedly gripping horror film that is part possession story and partly about the regression of a drug addict. We've seen lots of horror films that depict the descent into madness, usually as a result of some sort of otherworldly force that targets the protagonist for some reason or another, and in many of them our main character usually spends a lot of time and energy trying to convince friends and family that the threat is real. It's interesting to note that in a lot of these sorts of films the "other" in question is eventually proven to exist, vindicating the hero or heroine and forcing everyone else to accept a larger definition of what's possible. "Lovely Molly" takes a more traditional approach, returning to the basics found in Poe and placing them against the bland backdrop of lower class country life. Instead of reassurances, we're given a glimpse of how even sudden and violent shifts in one's character can be swallowed up by the murkiness of simple small-town America.

Nothing's particularly flashy here, and the film is the better for it. Molly's and Tim's house is unremarkable, for one, and looks like the kind of place most people could actually picture themselves living in. The supporting characters, from Molly's sister Hannah (Alexandra Holden) to Pastor Bobby (Field Blauvelt), whom Tim hopes can put to rest any notions that supernatural forces might be involved, are consistently believable. Sanchez keeps all the cast but Lodge at a nice mid-range volume, the better to gauge her gradual deterioration, and Lodge does an excellent job of selling Molly as someone who, at the story's outset, has already lost some of her spark, but can still lose a great deal more.

Molly is an unreliable narrator if there ever was one, and we're never absolutely sure if she's being genuinely tormented by a sinister spirit, or if her abuse-filled family past and history of addiction has finally caught up with her. The camera sometimes sees what she sees, and sometimes it doesn't. What matters most by the end is that we're watching a sad and often bloody trip down the whirlpool, and the film is at its best when it treads the fine line of ambiguity. Despite a couple of iffy moments towards the end, it's still unclear which version of the story Sanchez wants us to think is true. And it ultimately doesn't matter, since this is somber and affecting stuff either way.

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