I read the fawning thoughts of my fellow-reviewers, marveling over what they consider a masterpiece of horror and suspense and I keep thinking, guys, you've really got to see more movies. "An American Haunting" is a piece of forgettable cinematic roadkill littering American screens today. It would be like calling bathtub flatulence a tsunami or a swarm of gnats a flock of eagles.
American cinema today confuses modest CGI & F/X shots for a story. It's almost an echo of early 20th century cinema just jump around a lot and the folks will love it! There's no depth or resonance to this movie.
The single greatest failing is its pacing. Once things start happening, fairly early on, the movie bumps and twitches along for about an hour and change. A truly frightening film should work like a roller coaster, a serene climb heavenward, followed by a 3-G plunge and a loopty-loop, then another slow steady spot, etc. Shock is effective when the audience never sees it coming. "An American Haunting" hyperactively jumps and jitters with no pause for that sense of safety that could have punched it up.
The result of this is that we never feel the horror. We watch the horror. Everything is strictly visual. Think back to movies that two of the leads were in earlier in their careers. I'm thinking of Donald Sutherland's "Don't Look Now" (1973) and Sissy Spacek's "Carrie" (1976). In both movies we felt what those characters were feeling. Their nightmare became ours. In "An American Haunting" we passively sit there as: (A) An actor starts twitching (B) The screen flickers into black & white (C) Composer Caine Davidson pounds us over the head with a non-stop, noisy, in-your-ear score.
There's no interior sense. No feel for a quiet terrible threat. As a result this feels more like a Halloween made-for-TV movie that would air on the Hallmark Channel than a legitimate masterwork of suspense that we'd see on the large screen.
The point-of-view is all messed up. The movie's supposed to be a letter from a mother to her daughter but keeps dipping into territory the mother couldn't possibly know. Is this the mother's story? The daughter's? We also get to see scenes from the father's and the entity's point-of-view.
Director Courtney Solomon's only other directing credit (according to the IMDb) is the 2000 "Dungeons & Dragons." I'm stunned that he was able to survive the wreckage of that film to release another (there must be a 5-year statute of limitations on nearly unwatchable drek). If you want a good scare we have about 100 years of cinema and dozens of wonderful examples. "An American Haunting" does not deserve to be on the same list as "The Haunting," "The Innocents," "Psycho" or any of numerous other horror classics.
American cinema today confuses modest CGI & F/X shots for a story. It's almost an echo of early 20th century cinema just jump around a lot and the folks will love it! There's no depth or resonance to this movie.
The single greatest failing is its pacing. Once things start happening, fairly early on, the movie bumps and twitches along for about an hour and change. A truly frightening film should work like a roller coaster, a serene climb heavenward, followed by a 3-G plunge and a loopty-loop, then another slow steady spot, etc. Shock is effective when the audience never sees it coming. "An American Haunting" hyperactively jumps and jitters with no pause for that sense of safety that could have punched it up.
The result of this is that we never feel the horror. We watch the horror. Everything is strictly visual. Think back to movies that two of the leads were in earlier in their careers. I'm thinking of Donald Sutherland's "Don't Look Now" (1973) and Sissy Spacek's "Carrie" (1976). In both movies we felt what those characters were feeling. Their nightmare became ours. In "An American Haunting" we passively sit there as: (A) An actor starts twitching (B) The screen flickers into black & white (C) Composer Caine Davidson pounds us over the head with a non-stop, noisy, in-your-ear score.
There's no interior sense. No feel for a quiet terrible threat. As a result this feels more like a Halloween made-for-TV movie that would air on the Hallmark Channel than a legitimate masterwork of suspense that we'd see on the large screen.
The point-of-view is all messed up. The movie's supposed to be a letter from a mother to her daughter but keeps dipping into territory the mother couldn't possibly know. Is this the mother's story? The daughter's? We also get to see scenes from the father's and the entity's point-of-view.
Director Courtney Solomon's only other directing credit (according to the IMDb) is the 2000 "Dungeons & Dragons." I'm stunned that he was able to survive the wreckage of that film to release another (there must be a 5-year statute of limitations on nearly unwatchable drek). If you want a good scare we have about 100 years of cinema and dozens of wonderful examples. "An American Haunting" does not deserve to be on the same list as "The Haunting," "The Innocents," "Psycho" or any of numerous other horror classics.