The Legend of Lucy Keyes (2006)

A Masterpiece!

There's a good chance the film will make you laugh out loud, but if it doesn't, there's an even better chance it will make you openly sob.

an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

One family comes face-to-face with the forces of the unknown in this supernatural thriller based on actual events. On April 14, 1755, something terrible happened to Lucy Keyes in the forest surrounding Wachusett Mountain. 250 years later, Guy (Justin Theroux) and Joanne Cooley (Julie Delpy) move their family into an 18th century farmhouse at the foot of the mountain to escape the city, and recover from the death of their youngest child to SIDS. It seemed like the perfect place to get a fresh start and raise their two young daughters Molly and Lucy. Upon discovering that the Keyes family had occupied the farmhouse at the time of their daughter's death, Joanne begins having strange dreams, and hearing haunting cries coming from the woods. After finding a letter admitting to the murder of Lucy Keyes, Joanne becomes convinced that Martha and Lucy Keyes' spirits are attempting to contact her in hopes that she can set them free from their earthly limbo, and begins to fear that their grieving mother plans to claim Lucy Cooley as a substitute for her own missing daughter. As Guy attempts to convince the townspeople to approve construction of a wind farm project that he's currently working on, his wife's sanity begins to slip and their marriage starts to falter. Joanne's attempt to expose the truth about Lucy Keyes' disappearance only leads to greater terror, however, when the townspeople turn on the family, and young Lucy Cooley vanishes into the woods one cold and windy night.

Possible Spoilers ahead………….I like ghost films; I find them more frightening than horror films as I, like most people, have had supernatural experiences and do not have to suspend disbelief too much as I must with horror films.Sadly, I was disappointed with this one and had to force myself to watch it until the end (doing the ironing helped!).The story of Lucy Keyes, as related in the film, is a nice bit of local folklore but it is not even remotely frightening. Consequently, the film is not frightening because…where is the menace coming from? Some people would hear the ghost of the 18th century mother calling Lucy! Lucy! during the night, and the 21st century mother, whilst taking a break from her repetitive tossing & turning, once caught a glimpse of her ghost; but nothing was done with this glimpse nor did it develop the film at all. The ghosts were almost incidental apart from the next door neighbour using smelly devices to keep the ghost away. Finding a hidden mural is an old and effective device, however, the director did nothing with the mural that was found under the wallpaper; it should have revealed a clue or added to the story, rather than merely remaining as background scenery in the room or an occasional talking point.This film is a catalogue of wasted opportunities to add suspense and a sense of mounting fright. Instead the viewer is treated to almost 90 interminable minutes of the ethics of wind turbines and a boringly unstable mother having the same dream over and over while doing some research on the side and eventually wandering through the woods at night calling Lucy! Lucy! in imitation of the mother of Lucy Keyes! I understand that both mothers had a dead child and the modern mother could empathise with the ghost mother, and that she would be afraid that her own Lucy would also disappear. Unfortunately, she just came across as paranoid with a constant snappy attitude towards her husband.So, to sum up; nothing interesting happens for 90 minutes and there is not one single scare or suspenseful moment in the entire film!!!!Incidentally, the crypt appeared to have dry-stone walls; dry-stone walls do not remain intact for 200 years without maintenance, so I think Lucy's remains would have been found at least 150 years earlier!

Being based on a true disappearance, I think the movie did justice to the mystery from the 1700s. For an independent film, it had a lot less gore than most fright flicks and it is to be commended for that. Expanding the tale to solve the mystery may have been too ambitious a project for the director. However, I find the bittersweet ending to have been well thought out and fairly executed. I think the fear that the Keyes descendant felt should have been explored more in the script, but perhaps explanation for that was left on the editing floor. All in all, I felt it was a decent attempt at solving a centuries-old mystery in a manner that unfortunately, sadly still occurs in this day and age.

I'm from Princeton, so I know all about Lucy Keyes. And since this movie was filmed on site at Princeton (this was cool for me because never before could I point at a scene in a movie and say: "I went there yesterday" every other day), I recognized everything-but the people. All of them were hired actors pretending to live in the town, when I knew well that they didn't belong. But this was only a feeling one living in Princeton would get.In perspective to the quality of the movie; it was great. And it included quite a bit of background of the town, not just the ghosts: the clam bellies on the farm, and the windmills on the mountain. And although the actual legend as told in the story was off (Lucy went into the woods to follow her sisters to a pond without their knowledge, not blueberry picking) it was well told through the scenes of Jeanne's research. The frequent fade-ins and -outs became somewhat annoying, but seemed to heighten suspense. The acting was mediocre at parts, but that made the movie seem to be real, rather than obviously great actors doing obviously well-written scripts- life isn't like that. As for the whole plot, it was good, and maintained an amount of suspense, although a climax was never fully reached. As for the ghosts, they were creepy, but a bit inconsistent, and almost all of the cliché spook-scenes are used, so not much in achievement there.As for the ending, this was disappointing. I won't give it away, but it doesn't fit the story. If you've lived in Princeton and know the story, you will know that there is no solution to the mystery, and to place one there doesn't seem right.So, all in all, the movie was an exciting experience, with chilling fright-scenes, with parts of love, sadness, desperation, and comedy, too. But still, a bit of a let-down near the end.