Movie Review The Haunting of Molly Hartley

The Haunting of Molly Hartley (2008) 

Directed by Mickey Liddell 

Written by Rebecca Sonnenshine, John Travis

Starring Haley Bennett, Chace Crawford, Annalynne McCord, Ron Canada 

Release Date October 31st, 2008

Published October 31st, 2008 

If PG-13 horror movies get anymore tired they are going to have to sell Starbucks coffee with every ticket. I needed an extra strength caffeine back-up to stay awake during the latest mind numbing PG-13 'horror movie,' The Haunting of Molly Hartley, a slow witted, formulaic piece of over-marketed junk.

Haley Bennett is Molly Hartley, a pretty but troubled young girl whose mother tried to kill her. Mom stabbed Molly but she survived and mom went away. Now Dad (Jake Weber) has moved her to a new High School where she befriends the most popular and handsome boy in the school, Joseph (Chace Crawford).

But, of course, Haley's past can't help but follow her to the new school. First it's terrible nightmares about her mom's attack. Then word gets around that her mother is in an asylum, kids can be so cruel. Then Molly begins to have her own psychotic freak outs, just like mom's and then... well things get even worse with one last twist.

First time feature director Mickey Liddell directed The Haunting of Molly Hartley with all the skill of a sledgehammer hitting cement. The film offers thuddingly loud jump-scare sounds, whipsaw camera tricks and faux suspense to build what little atmosphere it can in order to hold us in place till the big twist is revealed.

It doesn't work. By the time we get to the 'twist' the audience's minds have drifted to other things such as, dinner after the show, laundry, ceiling tiles, napping., stamp collecting, texting, crossword puzzles, the stimulus package, navel lint, favorite beers, ear hair, other movies, is it cold enough for a winter coat or warm enough for a jacket?

Should I go back to the gym? Did I bring my checkbook? That was a good milkshake? Was that my phone? What's that stuck to my shoe...

Oops sorry, The Haunting of Molly Hartley is so deathly dull and preposterously forgettable that I managed to drift off during my review. You can go ahead and skip the rental on The Haunting Of Molly Hartley, unless your most inane thoughts need a dull bleating soundtrack. Then maybe.


Movie Review The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things

Movie Review The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things (2006) 

Directed by Asia Argento 

Written by Asia Argento, Alessandro Magania 

Starring Asia Argento, Jimmy Bennett, Cole Sprouse, Dylan Sprouse, Marilyn Manson, 

Release Date March 10th, 2006

Published July 17th, 2006 

We have seen manic moms portrayed on the big screen before. Most often they are wild eccentrics who try harder to be their child's pal instead of their parent. They are loving but scattered mom's who are often as childish as their kids.

The mother played by Asia Argento in The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things is no loving eccentric. After retrieving her seven year old son from a loving foster home this manic depressive, drug and alcohol addicted sex worker proceeds to drag the kid through some of the worst experiences that the modern American underbelly has to offer.

At the age of seven Jeremiah, played by Jimmy Bennett, finds himself forced from the only home he has ever known. The mother who abandoned him as a baby has somehow procured custody of him and is determined to play mommy.

Over the course of a few years Jeremiah is subjected to numerous abuses, is forced to witness mom turning tricks, often just a few feet where he cowers in fear. His mother gives him drugs and alcohol and allows some of her men to abuse him the way they abuse her.

Then she's gone again and Jeremiah is left with her most recent 'new daddy'. This didn't last long as the new daddy really wasn't interested in raising a kid. So, after being sexually abused, Jeremiah somehow finds himself in the Christian fundamentalist home of his grandparents played by Peter Fonda and Ornelia Muti. They are strict, even vicious about their Christianity but anything is preferable to life on the streets.

Cut to three years later and Jeremiah, now played by twins Cole and Dylan Sprouse, is an 11 year old street corner preacher when mommy returns and wants him back. This leads to further horrors physical and sexual abuse, drugs, alcohol and a near death experience.

Asia Argento who plays mom in the film also directed The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things. Her direction is relentless and at times arresting. However, as I'm sure you have culled from my description, the film is all dark with no light. I have no idea what to take away from this picture but utter despair.

It is undeniably brave to present a story as bleak and heart-rending as this and to not dose it with irony or even a hint of goodness. The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things challenges its audience to look away. Look away from the constant horror that is this child's life. Turn, if you can, a blind eye to the fact that there are children out there living this life.

Just last week in the tiny town of Spencer Iowa a woman left her five year old son in the car while she was inside a bar getting drunk and stripping on a table top. The incident would have gone unnoticed if the mother had not gotten herself arrested. This scene is played out in The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things except there is no police interference. Young Jeremiah witnessed the alternate reality of that Spencer, Iowa scene.

The ending of the film is bitter, sad and open ended. Young Jeremiah's life remains in the horrifying orbit of his mothers disease. A disturbing end for a thoroughly disturbing film.

Movie Review Hostel

Hostel (2006) 

Directed by Eli Roth 

Written by Eli Roth 

Starring Jay Hernandez, Derek Richardson, Rick Hoffman

Release Date January 6th, 2006 

Published January 6th, 2006 

Filmmakers have a very interesting mental link between sex and violence. Because both are really the last societal taboos, certain forms of each are in violation of all social graces, they can be exploited in order to shock and titillate audiences. Movies as varied as the brilliant A History Violence and the abysmal Devil's Rejects have drawn sex and violence together as if the two things were inextricably linked.

Eli Roth, the director of the horror flick Hostel, is a true believer in the link between sex and violence. Hostel puts the two subjects in direct relation as college-aged protagonists seek cheap, meaningless sex on a trip through Europe and end up paying dearly for it in the typically mindless, blood-soaked fashion of modern exploitation flicks.

Paxton (Jay Hernandez) and Josh (Derek Richardson) are fresh out of college and ready to party. They have traveled to the modern day Sodom that is Amsterdam in search of the holy grail of twenty-something morons: loose woman and legal hash. Paxton is the more indulgent and headstrong of the two, partaking in both the willing bar girls and the pay-for-play gals lining the streets in lighted window displays. Josh, on the other hand, is slightly more reserved and even a little put off by the sex on sale.

Once Paxton and a fellow traveler, Oli (Eythor Gudjonsson), who the guys hook up with along the way, have exhausted the local talent, they come across a German teen who has the inside scoop on the best looking and loosest women in all of Europe. There is, the teen claims, a youth hostel that is on no map, and where the local women are dying to sleep with any foreigners. All the boys have to do is hop a train to scenic Bratislava.

A lengthy train trip later; the three friends have found the mythic hostel. The story is true: naked flesh is easy to come by and the naked women are easier than ever imagined. The fun, however, does not last long. After an epic night of debauchery, that even Josh partakes in, Oli disappears with a young Japanese girl. Soon Josh too has disappeared, and Paxton seeks out their new female companions to find out what happened to his pals.

He is told that both guys are at an art show, and, in standard Eastern European fashion, the supposed "art show" is housed in a slaughterhouse. Of course, by now we in the audience are well aware that the art show is actually a brutal torture chamber where hostel stayers are kidnapped and killed in the most horrifying ways imaginable.

Director Eli Roth showed an interesting level of originality in his first feature, 2003's Cabin Fever. That film was a skin-crawling genre exercise that twisted expectations by not focusing on a human killer but a timely viral killer. That film was not all that visually accomplished, partly because of its low budget, and neither is Hostel. The films share a low budget aesthetic, but Hostel, with a slightly higher budget and the imprimatur of Quentin Tarantino, makes it fair to wonder when Roth will finally show a talent for crafting visuals that don't rely on special effects splatter.

Of the many attempts at scary visuals, only a scene where a character has his kneecaps drilled and his Achilles heel sliced comes across as shocking. A later, gorier scene in which a woman's eyeball dangles precariously from its socket is truly underwhelming as both an effect and makeup. Poorly executed special effects aside, Roth lacks the necessary skill to negate his low budget with story tension.

Jay Hernandez, so impressive in the 2001 teen romance Crazy/Beautiful, fails to make a compelling lead in Hostel. His boorish American tourist bit is believable but not all that enjoyable or relatable. Co-star Derek Richardson's own wet blanket character is even less impressive, and thus no help to Hernandez. Only Icelandic actor Gudjonsson manages to be entertaining, but he is quickly dispatched. His charming comic presence is missed once he's gone.

Hostel has the hallmarks of the exploitation genre down cold. Buckets of blood are spilled, copious amounts of naked female flesh are displayed; all of the basic horror elements that had once held the genre in the movie ghetto of late night pay cable and direct to video land are featured in Hostel. Something about all that nudity in Hostel, combined with the lack of even one strong female character in Hostel, leads me to wonder whether Eli Roth has a problem with women. 

Hostel is not merely misogynist, the film demonstrates a direct loathing and objectification of women. The women of Hostel  exist to remove their clothing and die horribly. Whether this is a symptom of Roth's inability to write for women, a similar lack of compelling female characters plagued Cabin Fever, or he really does dislike women is up for debate.

Roth apparently enjoys the company of Quentin Tarantino and yet he seems to have never seen Kill Bill, which provided more than a few examples of how to write convincing, compelling female characters. Then again, writing is not Roth's strong suit anyway. On more than one occasion Roth comes within a few lines of something interesting and walks away to throw more blood and gore at the screen.

Hostel comes close to a clever parody of the current anti-American attitudes so pervasive in Europe where American travelers are encouraged to claim Canadian citizenship to avoid a hassle. Sadly Hostel comes to the precipice of joking about this timely subject but then travels the easier path to exploitation success, more naked flesh and piles of human remains.

There is also, I believe, an unintentional undercurrent of puritanical feelings bubbling beneath the surface of Hostel. The way in which sin and vice lead almost directly to death in Hostel is rather Old Testament. Hostel shares this sex-death link with classic horror movies like A Nightmare On Elm Street and Friday The 13th, but oddly no horror film director has had the nerve to explore this vengeful god scenario in an intellectually satisfying way.

Eli Roth may have earned the appreciation of a true genius in Quentin Tarantino, but there is no evidence in Hostel that Roth actually learned anything from his new mentor. Where Tarantino crafts artful visuals from the lowest of genres, Roth can barely craft a solid scare. That is not to say that Roth won't develop into a good director someday, but for now his work is merely terribly overrated.

For lovers of the exploitation genre, (what writer David Poland has cleverly dubbed the "horror porn" genre, including recent films like Devil's Rejects, High Tension and Wolf Creek) Hostel will be a huge hit. But for fans of well made movies, Hostel is yet another waste of screen space. 

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