The Haunting of Molly Hartley (2008)

Charming and brutal

What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

i don't understand why this get's a lot of hate,, now i can if this was a review for the Messengers, which i felt was god awful. never really heard of Haley Bennet before,, she is very beautiful and did a fairly decent job of acting in this one. our story has a girl moving to a new town to totally forget her past,, her dad makes sure of that.. apparently when she turn's 18 she's in for a whole lot of trouble, she was almost killed by her mother when she was little. and she has been suffering hallucinations, and all sorts of things. after being in a nut farm for awhile, i guess i would to. so on the eve of her 18th birthday someone decides to pay her a visit. i wont' say who you will have to watch and find out,, all i can say is this isn't the greatest movie of all time and by that same token it's nowhere near the worst,, i will watch again, as i 've seen this twice since it came out,, not a bad movie to watch if you want some thrills and mystery.

Before I get started you should know how easily scared I am of so-called "horror" films. I mean, some of the dumbest scary movies give me nightmares for days. This was no where near scary, suspenseful, or mysterious. The whole mystery is why can't Molly turn 18. Halfway through the movie you don't even care why. After watching this movie I could not believe it didn't go straight to DVD. The acting wasn't bad, it was the script and storyline. And the ending seemed like moments were missing. So the main reasons you should never watch this movie, no matter what the circumstances, are: 1. There is no originality 2. There's no feeling being portrayed to the audience. You're not afraid, empathetic, or even curious. It is so boring and detached. 3. They tried to make a twist, but it wasn't surprising or anything you couldn't guess. And the ending offers no resolve.Honestly, the scariest thing about this movie is that people actually went out and paid to see it. Made-for-TV movies are better than this huge waste of time. I beg you, don't watch it!

I wasn't sure how to sum up this movie for the above title. Overall, it was disorganized, poorly made, and inconsistent. The plot jumped all over the place - sometimes moving too quickly without giving adequate time to develop characters and relationships - and at other times, moving painfully slowly. The whole film kind of felt like a B movie or a made-for-TV movie in the way it was presented - the camera angles, scene transitions, special effects, bad dialogue, and bad acting. The moments that were probably intended to be the most dramatic in the movie (e.g., Molly locked in the bathroom, final encounter with Molly and Dr. Emerson) ended up being cheesy and not exactly frightening.The actor who played Molly's father was entirely unconvincing and unsympathetic. He was just kind of there because the film needed a parental figure but had no depth and no believability. In addition, I could hear him slip into his British accent on numerous occasions - a definite distraction. Most of the other characters were similarly underdeveloped, which makes it difficult to understand the relationships between them and Molly. I was especially unmoved by Joseph's (Chace Crawford) sudden and intense connection to Molly. They never showed more than a few casual encounters between the two of them, and yet, Joseph seems to be head over heels for Molly, despite the usual things that would turn a guy off when he first meets a girl - instability, emotionality, etc. It is only the ending that saves this aspect, and then only partially - we realize that Joseph was into Molly for evil reasons, so that is why he was pretending to be so drawn to her. Yet, Joseph's true role in the evil plot is never revealed. Is he one who was like her (parents had made a pact with Satan), or is he an old soul like Dr. Emerson (whom it was shown through a flashback, apparently does not age), or something else? As a discerning viewer I found many errors in this film, some glaring. Tn the scene where Molly is looking at the book in the library, three words are spelled incorrectly, one in each section ("aditory," "possibile," and "statisticly." Although others may not be bothered by this, to me, if you aren't going to have enough intelligence to edit your props and do your research, this does not bode well for the entire film. There is no excuse for this. In addition, Molly's incredibly visible scar that is seen in the first half of the film is miraculously absent in the latter half. By the way her blouse was hanging, it should have been greatly apparent in all of the scenes of confrontation with mother and father and Alexis, running, hysteria, etc., and I was looking for it, but it was never shown. Interesting editing. The scene where Molly's mother falls to her death is ridiculously lacking in the special effects. It is clearly a dummy plummeting and there are no attempts to make it look even remotely realistic. I have seen more believable special effects from movies that are decades old.What about Alexis? Shouldn't her body have been found in the church? Why do they show a "missing" flyer at graduation? What is the point of this? It's not like we are wondering what happened to her - we saw her slip under the water as Molly ran from the church. No mystery, no reason to have this at all. And, why in the world does Alexis dress like a housewife from the 1950s when she is not in her school uniform? Really? Even an "unpopular" girl would not dress like this. Furthermore, I didn't buy into Alexis' behavior. If Alexis knew about Molly's mom through her nurse grandmother, she would have acted sooner. Subtle attempts to say "I'm worried about you" or "I'm here to help" would not be her style, especially considering her vehement religious beliefs and her extreme actions in the church scene. This makes no sense at all.I could go on and on about all of the bad acting, bad plot, etc. Why is it that Molly's dad professed that her mom was still his wife and went to visit her when Molly refused, yet, he had no real reaction to her death and Molly was beset with grief? Why is it that he thinks the pact would be dissolved if Molly killed him? Come on, if Dr. Emerson suggested it, it has to be a trick! How could you believe in the whole evil scheme and yet trust the mastermind? As for Molly, I am ambivalent about the actress. I thought she was mostly believable in evoking genuine emotion and personality, but she had little to work with. It would be interesting to see her in another role to truly judge her acting ability.I am glad I saw this movie on TV, where I could rewind it in order to resolve inconsistencies, and because I didn't have to pay for it. The only reason that I gave it 2 out of 10 stars is the fact that the plot twist at the end was mildly surprising. The movie is really not worth the time it would take it to watch it, unless you are a girl crushing on Chace Crawford.

.. it's not that bad. 3,7 average really is not justified. I'm a horror movie fan, but I'm not a big fan of gore. I check here before I watch, so I can pass the ones that mostly rely on graphic shock images. Up until Saw and Hostel I could usually watch pretty much anything, but since these movies I have passed at least 50 % of the new "horror movies" that only seem to try and go crazier with the gore.Because of the latest "horror movies", I can easily understand why a movie like this just doesn't do it anymore. There is basically zero gore and very few scares. The movie doesn't even try to push the envelope any further, but tells an fairly interesting story with a strong religious undertone.Having said all this, the movie is not a complete winner either. It's a small movie, could be an episode of a series. It's not exactly Masters of Horror material (lack of gore and nudity), but the production values are somewhat similar. The movie looks OK, but is not dazzling. The acting is OK, but never much better. The script is OK, but nothing mind boggling. The CGI in one scene is just bad.Probably the biggest problem is that the movie is clearly made for teens, but it does not pack any of the ingredients teens of today really want from an horror movie. I'm not a teen anymore, so I appreciated the story, but it being clearly made for younger audience was a bit of turn off. Soundtrack is a bit of an problem too, you get the occasional upbeat college rock tunes, which don't quite fit in the somewhat serious tone of the whole.There has been talk that this movie is kind of anti-Christian. It could be seen this way if you get easily offended by the subject. For me this was quite interesting storywise, as there are rarely movies of this kind. The religion, Christianity and possible satanism are usually portrayed on a more symbolic level rather than with everyday people. I don't think it tries to feed a certain religious view. It just tells a story.I wouldn't rent this for a big money or go see this in a theater, but if you catch it on TV and have nothing else to do, give it a chance, it's not that bad.