Aside from a kind of cool looking ghostly teaser poster and a handful of slightly less annoying 20-second trailers that is all that is redeeming about the Haunting of Molly Hartley. I would be doing a great disservice to the movie watching public to even begin to try and recommend this swill of a so-called horror flick that is so full of the typical teenage scream queen clichés stealing a hodgepodge of junk from various good movies like Gothika and even the Craft. You should take the time to plant a tree, read a book or go feed the homeless.
What counts as suspenseful here will barely frighten a prepubescent little Mormon school girl. All of the elements are there to try and manipulate your fear sensors so cue the spooky mood heightening music and using mirrors as a special effect, use the stop motion spectre shimmy and the quick! Look over there; oh crap where did it go stuff and let us not forget the ghostly whispers that use the digital sound system to try and make you shriek OH NO! and wet yourself. There is utterly nothing new here and certainly originality left the club hours before. If the director had a vision he must have had suffered head trauma shortly before filming. The film is one giant dead end.
I will sum up the plot like this… The Omen meets hot girl in school girl uniform. Which really IS the best part because guys – you know you like 17 year old starlets in girl school uniforms (perverts!). Haley Bennet is the unfortunate actress to play the 17 year old Molly who seems to be quite an unlikely chickadee having been stabbed by her own mother. Obviously the girl is a bit nuts due to this and so her father, being altruistic yet so unbright, thinks moving his daughter away and to a new school where clique cliché runs supreme would be a GOOD way to restart her miserable life. Thanks dad, you suck. As her 18th birthday approaches so do the echoing dreams of her mother’s attacking her and the stress of a new locale and school certainly don’t help matters (thanks dad, you suck – again). Stealing moments from The Eye everyone just thinks she’s going bonkers just like dear, old mum. Of course there are OTHER explanations – Molly is supposed to be a servant of the Devil (cue ominous music)!
Just when you thought everything was building to the point this thing would FINALLY end and you’ll know what the hell is going on it just… ends. Credits roll and you’re left wondering if you actually fell asleep and missed something. The film itself is like 2 hours and you could snip the ending and a couple of minutes here and there and you might have something that appears to be an actual movie with merit – for 8 year old seeing their first horror movie that is. Can you say direct to DVD? Yea… I wish the producer’s could have said it too.
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