Post by Salzmank on Dec 4, 2021 3:43:35 GMT
Haunted, 1995, dir. Lewis Gilbert.
theravenking has recommended this woefully forgotten English ghost story a few times, and I’m happy I finally saw it. It’s so very good, with fine performances and gorgeous shot compositions. I can’t find many examples of the shots online, but the cinematography—particularly the color—is luscious throughout. (Why are so many movies nowadays literally gray? Movie after movie looks like someone sucked all the color out of them in favor of usually-ugly-as-sin grayscale.)
This is probably the best example I’ve seen, not including the related Ghostwatch, of a sub-subgenre I see often in English horror movies: the haunted house story with a professional debunker as protagonist, usually with the twist that
A young Kate Beckinsale—what can I say? She is so beautiful and charming here that you can’t help falling in love with her, as Aidan Quinn’s protagonist does almost immediately. Also, I have to say, those late ’20s fashions suit her perfectly.
This picture depends on spookiness rather than scares, which may not be to every horror fan’s taste but certainly is to mine. Many shots here struck me as tributes to another cinematic ghost story, The Uninvited (1944): A wispy ghost Quinn sees running across the lawn, for example, closely resembles The Uninvited’s climactic Mary Meredith. If you like The Uninvited, you’ll like this.
I could nitpick this (what about the fortune teller?), but I just enjoyed it enormously. It spoke to my inner romanticism, has some surprising uses of special effects, and shows off some memorable, spooky images and a stately, and well-conveyed, haunted house. Definitely recommended.
theravenking has recommended this woefully forgotten English ghost story a few times, and I’m happy I finally saw it. It’s so very good, with fine performances and gorgeous shot compositions. I can’t find many examples of the shots online, but the cinematography—particularly the color—is luscious throughout. (Why are so many movies nowadays literally gray? Movie after movie looks like someone sucked all the color out of them in favor of usually-ugly-as-sin grayscale.)
This is probably the best example I’ve seen, not including the related Ghostwatch, of a sub-subgenre I see often in English horror movies: the haunted house story with a professional debunker as protagonist, usually with the twist that
the debunker is really the ghost.
Other examples, with surprisingly minute variations, are The Awakening (2011), Ghost Stories (2017), and Malevolent (2018). Here the plot, while it has many similarities with those (one scene from this was practically copied verbatim in The Awakening), kept me more on my toes; I wasn’t 100% sure if the writers were doing that twist or something else. While I did figure out what was up, it didn’t come off as anticlimax.A young Kate Beckinsale—what can I say? She is so beautiful and charming here that you can’t help falling in love with her, as Aidan Quinn’s protagonist does almost immediately. Also, I have to say, those late ’20s fashions suit her perfectly.
This picture depends on spookiness rather than scares, which may not be to every horror fan’s taste but certainly is to mine. Many shots here struck me as tributes to another cinematic ghost story, The Uninvited (1944): A wispy ghost Quinn sees running across the lawn, for example, closely resembles The Uninvited’s climactic Mary Meredith. If you like The Uninvited, you’ll like this.
I could nitpick this (what about the fortune teller?), but I just enjoyed it enormously. It spoke to my inner romanticism, has some surprising uses of special effects, and shows off some memorable, spooky images and a stately, and well-conveyed, haunted house. Definitely recommended.
