It’s Halloween. The PG-13 audience needs something to do. They’re too old to trick or treat, and too young to go to parties or better, R-rated horror films. Sadly, their remaining option appears to be “The Haunting of Molly Hartley.”
The film begins with an opening sequence involving a father trying to kill his daughter, crying and saying over and over again, “I can’t let you turn 18.” It’s a nice enough beginning, but it lacks relevance to the actual plot of the movie, and is inherently more sad than scary- I cried a little, but then, I cry easily at movies. And it could have always been tears for the money I spent at the box office.
The rest of the film concerns Molly Hartley, a troubled teen dealing with a new private school, strange voices and nosebleeds, and the fact that her mother is now institutionalized after trying to murder Molly with a pair of scissors. As Molly, Haley Bennett gives a decent performance, ranging from unexpectedly violent to cute and flirty, with a decent number of panic sequences in the middle. The audience did laugh hysterically at some of her more violent moments, but it’s nice to have a little cheese in a horror film. Especially one so devoid of other entertainment.
Most horror films possess one of two kinds of entertainment. Either they have so much gore and terrifying images that the audience leaves wanting to vomit (think Silent Hill, The Hills Have Eyes, or Amityville Horror), or they avoid gore and concentrate on suspense (The Others). The best horror films have both, but Molly Hartley manages to have neither. There is one spooky face thrown in the middle for no apparent reason, but otherwise, the scares come from birds, mail through a mail slot, and visions of Molly’s dead mother, shouting, “Let me save youuuuuuu!” at the top of her lungs across the street. The scariest thing about the movie is the fact that I expected it to be scarier. There is something so terrifying about anti-climax.
The film is fairly predictable for the most part. The second we recognize that Molly is destined to be Satan’s homegirl (which is from the beginning of the movie- not from the dialogue, mind you, but from the trailers), it becomes obvious that her religious-zealot friend is going to either save her or try to kill her (or both, as the case turns out to be). The film is rife with plot-holes- we assume Molly is only having visions of her mother, but she does end up appearing for real at one point- after all, Molly’s father does check on the dead body. Which leads to the obvious yet never answered question- how did she even get out of the maximum-security mental institution in the first place?
The ending is a bit out of left field, and my film-going companion and I argued about it for the rest of the evening, since we simply could not agree on what happened. He thought it was a complete non-sequitor dream sequence, and I thought it was a Stepford Wives-esque attempt at a meaningful letdown, if one that only manages to be disappointing. Neither ending manages to make sense, and the fact that we never came to a consensus means that this movie was going over one or both of our heads, and is likely to do the same to most of its candy-hungry audience. The only real consolation was the feeling that it really could have been worse. Grade: C
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