The Haunting of Molly Hartley

So if the poster doesn't give you much of an idea of who's the good guys and the bad (a certain devilish looking Gossip Girl star) here's the trailer so you can basically see the entire movie in under three minutes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IICI7g3jMGI

The haunting of Molly Hartley came out last Halloween and like many people who viewed the trailer I knew it wasn't going to be very good. Still, I always hold the best intentions for a horror film especially if it's released during the week of Halloween. Unfortunately it was a giant let down.

The film opens to a flashback (if you can call it one, since it was only 1991) following a young girl in the woods following notes that lead her to a run down cabin. A million jump scares later you see that she's some what paranoid because their are people or "things" following her around but she quickly shakes them off. That is until her terrifying father comes out of nowhere (jump scare) and demands her to leave with him. As they drive away he begins to break down and talk crazy about how she can't turn 18. He then proceeds to run the car off the road and get side swiped by a semi (another jump scare) but they both survive and are strapped into the truck. The dad, now clearly insane finds a good piece of glass broken from his car window and stabs his daughter while she pleads for her life, ultimately killing her....I think. Funny thing is that the sub story is never brought back and serves as that shocking first ten minutes of a film.

Cut to present day the cute and quiet Molly Hartley wakes up from a horrifying dream of being stabbed. As you can see in the trailer Molly hyperventilates A LOT. The actress playing Molly wasn't actually that terrible and most of the actors were pretty convincing, despite the terrible interpretation of an amazing plot. This plot is basically about Molly or the previous girls 18th birthday and that they would be searched out by "the darkness" and their souls would belong to the devil.

It's not an unfamiliar story in the horror genre and usage of contemporary objects like cell phones, cars and computers are put to a minimum which I always enjoy. An example is when Molly's in the library searching through the stacks and (surprise, surprise) has a jump scare with Chase Crawford. He looks at her and says "books really?" To that she replies "school's track everything you research." Not the most mind blowing scene but an interesting approach to make the scenes and settings feel at least a little retro.

Weird things do happen during this film, but my main problem with it is the hot and cold conflict and the completely awful ending. The beginning starts off with a semi-interesting story that leads us to Molly who is the new girl in town and has a secret. The secret being that her mother is locked up in a psych ward because she tried to kill Molly. Molly is incredibly delicate and inherits paranoia and nose bleeds only to find out she has a small nasal tumor that is later removed. So then scary things stop happening and the romance/befriending of Molly starts happening. Then it goes back to being weird as her mother begins to follow her. The truth comes out that Molly has two days till her birthday and the devil owns her soul so she tries to get baptized and acquire some faith, only to be held under water by the weird religious girl from school because "her grandma works at the psych ward that holds her mother."

There were just too many coincidences and the ending didn't make any sense at all.

Spoiler Alert!!!!

Basically Molly's cornered literally twelve seconds (as a clock chimes midnight) by her guidance counselor (who was the one who made a deal with her parents in the first place) and Chase (who is also Satan's minion???) Molly stabs herself and then it cuts to her father being in the psych ward and Molly is all sexy and straightened out. She has her dad committed, then it cuts to her graduation where she's the validvictiorian (of course) and giving a speech. All of the sudden she's the most popular girl in school and straightened out her life. Then it just ends. Seriously that's the ending.

So basically the moral of the story is that becoming evil is inevitable and you really shouldn't fight it because you'll straighten out your life, be rich, class president, pretty and get the man of your dreams. I don't know what Molly was worried about.

The film could have at least played with the notion of evil Molly or what had become of her but instead it ended like a teen drama and was a complete waste of time. I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to already remake the film because it had potential but was a pussy cop out in the end.