[](/wp- content/uploads/american_haunting_ver2.jpg)I’d love to brag that, prior to seeing An American Haunting, I was familiar with the legend of the Bell Witch, but I can’t: I Googled it when I got back to my computer the night after seeing Courtney Solomon’s frankly terrible “ghost” story. I’m glad I did; the legend is genuinely intriguing and has a wealth of cinematic potential. In the right hands, with the right script, it could prove to be a fascinating, creepy little film. Instead we have the hackneyed, insulting pile of rubbish on offer here.
The main gist of the legend is that the Bell Witch (a supernatural creature, rather than an actual witch) terrorised John Bell and his family - most specifically his daughter Betsy - ultimately resulting in John’s death. It tells of a remarkably powerful spirit capable of coherent speech and intelligent conversation, in possession of a vast knowledge of scripture, and seemingly able to recount events which have taken place in two completely different places simultaneously. It is claimed that Andrew Jackson (who would eventually become President) had an encounter, and is quoted as saying “I’d rather fight the entire British Army than have to deal with the Bell Witch.” I can sympathise; I’d rather fight the entire British army than have to sit through this drivel again. At one point, so the legend says, the creature ceased its haunting activities in order to nurse Bell’s wife back to health, even gathering nuts to aid the woman’s recovery. The various elements of the legend are well worth a read, ideally before (and preferably instead of) seeing the film as they serve to highlight precisely how appalling its treatment is. An American Haunting fails to capture very much of the legend at all, and I’m genuinely puzzled by some of the omissions - there’s a fantastic story about one of the men in Jackson’s company claiming to be a witch-tamer (but spectacularly failing to tame this particular supernatural entity) which would come across brilliantly on screen. There are also suggestions that the witch may have been an elaborate hoax created by the local teacher in order to frighten Betsy into marrying him, another element which is totally ignored. A wealth of information on the legend can be found online and I’ve included a few links at the end of this review.
The fundamental problem with An American Haunting is that it never manages to scare or disturb on any level. It has numerous other issues: The acting and script are sub-standard, the musical score is hideously over the top, the location isn’t terribly effective, and the whole thing is book-ended with a tedious, made-for-tv style modern intro and coda which result in large sections of exposition being delivered through an incredibly bad voice-over. Yet it’s the failure to evoke any feeling of fear which is most damnable.
Essentially, all attempts at horror fall short - generally as a result of the poor direction. As an example, the repeated pulling back of bed sheets isn’t spooky - I’m sure it’s mildly annoying on a cold night, but it’s far from terrifying. Betsy playing on the swings with a phantom child only she can see (a scene which has been used so many times before) isn’t spooky either. Whenever the spirit manifests itself we’re treated to a swirling camera, panning around the room for every character (usually more than once) to visibly react to an apparently invisible entity, while the picture transitions from colour to black and white (and, occasionally, a negative black and white image). This isn’t at all creepy; it’s just bloody annoying, particularly the third or fourth time we’re subjected to it. And while on the subject of the swirling camera, there are many shots in An American Haunting which I’m sure the director would like to call “Raimi-esque”. I prefer to think of them as “Raimi-wannabe”; they lack any talent, effectiveness, or imagination. Every _night we’re shown _another _sweeping POV shot of the entity approaching from the woods. Every night we get the _same swirl around the room. The one variation (a long shot which scours the house, then sweeps out over the woods before zooming in on a carriage) is so obviously a series of spliced together takes (and so painfully unoriginal) that it deserves very little credit.
And of all the things I don’t like about this film, it’s the ending which galls me the most. Despite the fact that the film suggests that it will tell the tale of a haunting, and that the poster suggests the involvement of some form of possession, the ending reveals that neither is actually to blame. This moronic little “twist” is hammered home without the vaguest trace of subtlety, insultingly repeating the same piece of information using voice-over, dialog, and flash-back. The film-maker’s clearly expect the audience to be too stupid to work things out for themselves, and consider it their duty to ensure that you leave the cinema in a state of total clarity. They have, however, failed to notice that their finale actually makes most of what comes before completely nonsensical. The explanation itself is even more stupefying than the way in which it’s delivered; given that the Bell Witch is the only recorded death in which a spirit is cited as the cause it makes no sense to dream up an ending which doesn’t play to the film’s greatest potential strength, let alone one which is so disrespectful to the memory of the Bell clan. The events of the period ending are then repeated in the modern day coda, ending the film on a note which I suspect is supposed to be haunting, but which simply served to top up my apathy levels nicely.
If you’re expecting a good, old fashioned ghost story there’s little for you here. This is sub-Exorcist, creaky period rubbish, which doesn’t even have the balls to deliver a decent spirit in its pay-off. Avoid.
On a lighter note, here are those links:
[http://www.prairieghosts.com/b-cave.html](http://www.prairieghosts.com/b-cave .html)
http://www.bellwitch.org/story.htm
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Witch](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The _Bell_Witch)