20140201: Horror Review--The Bell Witch Haunting

The Bell Witch Haunting

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film, 2013, NR, 90 minutes, horror
2. IMDB: 3.4/10.0 from 492 audience ratings.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reivews yet,' 6% liked it from 106 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 2.8/5.0 from 84,954 audience ratings.
5. Directed by: Glenn Miller.
6. Starring: Cat Alter as Dana, Drew Cash as Scott, Brandan Hellenthal as Brandon Sawyer, Julia Cearley as Janette Sawyer, Natalie Burtney as Lisa.


2. Setup and Plot
1. The Robertson County Sheriff's Department (in TN, I think, rather than TX or KY) has a short segment where they say they found some footage from the cell phones and video cameras on or near the Sawyer families corpses. So, we are locked into 'found footage.'  Later on in the film the cops called to find Dana Sawyer refers to himself as from Adams County PD.


2. Brandon gets a video camera as a birthday gift.  He starts annoying everyone immediately.  He records some poltergeist activity in empty rooms, but never seems to notice this.  He records a whole lot of other things that get ignored.


3. The daughter has terrifying dreams.  The lights flicker; the electrician they call gets electrocuted on an outside junction box.  The son and his friend find some history of the county which includes the Bell Witch.  As it turns out, the house and grounds intersect with the land owned by the Bell Witch.


4. As time wears on, the family dies except for one.


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Found footage death elimination derby; camera quality better than some other found footage disasters.
2. Two stars of five.  Favourite part: Dana kills her brother with his birthday present.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 4/10 The usual mix: anything from shaky cam plus bad everything all the way to full-lit, beautifully framed and focused.  The long intervals of static shots of empty rooms were not a plus.


2. Sound: 4/10 Varies, just like the visuals.  Some of it is really poor, where words are hard to figure out.


3. Acting: 2/10 More or less at reality-TV level.  The exorcism scene just sucked rocks in terms of acting.


4. Screenplay: 2/10 Nothing new.  Perhaps 10 minutes of content stretched over 90 minutes of bad visuals and iffy sound.