It's difficult to root for anybody in this week thriller with Ali MacGraw and Billie Whitelaw as the most unlikely of sisters. MacGraw has been absent for years, coming back to England totally broke and moving back into the family farm where domineering sister Whitelaw rules the roost and makes all the demands an older sister can. MacGraw is unsettled being back in her childhood home, have been desperately escaped years before and now having no other choice. Whitelaw is very hard on her at one point, then switches tracks out of the blue, then all of a sudden slapped her across the face when she finds out that MacGraw had an abortion.
MacGraw too switches faces very fast, all of a sudden plotting her sister's murder with the aide of handyman lover Ray Lonnen whose wife has just conveniently fallen down the stairs. Attacks on random women in the area has everybody paranoid that somebody around them is a killer. Hywel Bennett costars as Whitelaw's loyal foreman, another character rather undeveloped who has his own demons, much like everybody else on this farm. A good cast has to suffer with a really bad script that is as messy as the stables Whitelaw constantly commands that MacGraw clean out. MacGraw in the 80's lost her screen presence, while after "The Omen", Whitelaw slipped into camp which slides out in her strong performance here and there. A weak, totally forgettable thriller.
MacGraw too switches faces very fast, all of a sudden plotting her sister's murder with the aide of handyman lover Ray Lonnen whose wife has just conveniently fallen down the stairs. Attacks on random women in the area has everybody paranoid that somebody around them is a killer. Hywel Bennett costars as Whitelaw's loyal foreman, another character rather undeveloped who has his own demons, much like everybody else on this farm. A good cast has to suffer with a really bad script that is as messy as the stables Whitelaw constantly commands that MacGraw clean out. MacGraw in the 80's lost her screen presence, while after "The Omen", Whitelaw slipped into camp which slides out in her strong performance here and there. A weak, totally forgettable thriller.