Lovely Molly (2011)

You won't be disappointed!

Just perfect...

Absolutely Brilliant!

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

In a video recording dated 10.16.2011, Molly (Gretchen Lodge) is suicidal but can't kill herself. She says, "It won't let me do it." A year earlier, she is getting married to Tim (Johnny Lewis). They move into her childhood home assisted by her sister Hannah (Alexandra Holden). Molly is alone while Tim is away. She starts to deteriorate.It's not anything terribly new. Director Eduardo Sánchez of Blair Witch fame brings a mix of found footage and indie horror. It does have a disjointed feel. It can be confused. Gretchen Lodge has a nice disaffected performance. It's a middling horror that doesn't excel but it does have its moments.

Whenever director Eduardo Sanchez's name is brought up the words "co- director of the Blair Witch Project" will inevitably follow. The two sided coin of being responsible for a complete shake up of the entire film industry, but then spending the rest of your career trying to recapture former glory, also known as The "Shyamalan Effect". As a solo director he followed up with the mediocre "Altered" in 2006 and the unwatchable "Seventh Moon" in 2008. So when "Lovely Molly" came around in 2011, needless to say expectations were pretty low, and after a bit of hesitation, I found the time to see it. I can honestly say that this is by far his best film. The characters, the story and just about everything put on screen it is right on. "Blair Witch" in itself was not a great movie, but its effects on how films are made and marketed are still felt today. Conversely "Lovely Molly" is not going to have the same effect, but is a far a better film."Lovely Molly" owes the majority of its success to Molly herself, played by Gretchen Lodge. A young woman looking to reclaim her life after a battle with drug addiction and a brutal childhood. A newlywed who moves back to her childhood home with her husband Tim (Johnny Lewis), a truck driver. Molly works as a shopping mall janitor with her supportive sister Hannah (Alexandra Holden). Maybe moving back to her childhood home was not such a good idea, as her mental state takes a steep dive as repressed memories, hallucinations, and ghostly encounters meld into one terrifying situation after another. There are your classic horror clichés' of creaking doors, investigating noises in a dark and such, but Lodge's fearless and dedicated performance puts this film above others. It falls into the category of slow burn psychological horror, which can sometimes be code for stupid and boring, but the story and characters (mainly Molly) are given time to develop. Although it does have its share of horrific imagery it doesn't lean on.A big part of the storyline involves Molly's creepy video diary of her stalking around her neighbors, and wandering in the woods. Yes, sort of "Blair Witch-esque". She seems to be possessed during these nightly escapades. The opening of the film shows her on the other end of the camera with a knife to her throat wanting all of it to end. Is everything that happens to her real or is it all in her disturbed mind? This is the main question the film asks and some people will not like the answer. But I think Sanchez did the right thing in how he chose to end the film. After a repeat watching Molly's story really is a lot deeper that what lies on the surface.

After moving into her childhood home, a newlyweds' psychological trauma from the past returns to haunt her and her husband as they come to realize they are not alone in the house and must try to save her sanity.This was an overall mess of a horror film that barely has anything worthwhile going for it. The biggest issue here is that nothing at all happens here which is what makes this one play out so slowly and agonizing that it really becomes a struggle to get through the first twenty minutes of this, much less the rest of the effort. Since this one throws in story lines about her past drug use and the increasing amount of time she's unable to sleep through the night that we get here, it makes for quite a logical turn that those would be given as the result of ghostly encounters with the past coming back to haunt her, but instead there's hardly anything about her encounters with the ghosts and it comes off more like her just going mad for no reason so that her completely lunatic behavior is the result of her coming unhinged for no reason. That's a far less interesting recourse here and when coupled with such needless and overlong sequences as her having trouble at her job and the completely filler sequences of hanging out with the sister complaining about her husband who's never home anyway so that there's a slew of endless talking scenes that just eat up time and come off as completely uninteresting so that there's hardly any kind of ghost encounters here that come off as terrifying which is the film's biggest downfall. This is way too talky and drawn-out for it's own good, but when combined with the fact that there's just not a lot of good encounters with the supernatural threat within this and it really comes off all the worse off with almost all the areas here needed for a successful effort working against it. That's not to say it's a total loss, as despite the fact that there's no good encounters that doesn't mean there's none at all here so that a few of these scenes are somewhat decent as a sequence where she nearly-sleepwalks through the house and tears up the basement to reveal an animal carcass buried in its' ceiling which makes for an interesting series of events against the low-key nature of the rest of this as well as a dark and twisted torture sequence that comes off a little better although it does hold back on the graphic denouement it was going for. Still, this one isn't all that impressive overall.Rated R: Graphic Language, Full Nudity, Graphic Violence, several sex scenes and drug use.

The Blair Witch marketing stamp is applied to yet another film. This time we're told that the writer/director of the cult classic which 'redefined the horror genre' (depending on your opinion of three kids running round a wood at night) is at the helm of this latest frightfest 'Lovely Molly.' Once again, the use of 'first person filming' is used for Lovely Molly, which tells the story of a newlywed couple who move into an old house in the middle of nowhere. However, when the husband is away driving for work, strange (and definitely not so lovely) things start to happen to Molly.First of all the good: the performances. Everyone does very well with what they're given and the acting is pretty hard to fault. However, there's not an awful lot of characters. The husband is largely away and Molly spends much of her time experiencing things on her own (then going and telling her sister about it every few days).The main problem with the film is that, although well-acted, it's really nothing we haven't seen before, i.e. walk round a creepy house and then get grabbed by some unseen supernatural force.Yes, there's a story woken in there somewhere, but, ultimately, there's nothing new enough here to really make it stand out. The reason Blair Witch worked was because it was original (or at least revitalised a genre that had lain dormant for a long time). This time the film-makers just retreads well-worn ground.It's okay, just nothing special enough to warrant elevating it over the other million similar horror movies out there right now.