Review

Molly and Tim have just gotten married and have decided to move into Molly's deceased father's old derelict house, that actually looks like something straight out of Amityville. Anyways Tim is a trucker and is on the road a lot, so naturally a derelict manse out in the middle of nowhere would be just the thing for his young bride. Molly works with her sister as a cleaner, so I guess money is pretty tight, hence the housing solution.

Naturally the house has some dark memories for Molly and they begin to percolate to the surface as some freaky stuff begins to happen in the dark. Is our Gal hallucinating, is something dark in the house, and where the hell did Molly get the drugs. As her personality starts to change, and a whole horse thing begins to go down, the people around Molly are in danger. Can the local Priest, her sister, anyone, stop Molly from spiralling out of control or is there something darker prowling the halls and cellar of the place she calls home?

Director Eduardo Sanchez is of course one half of the team that brought us The Blair Witch Marketing Project, that many foolish North Americans assumed was the first of the "food footage" movies. Those of us in the Commonwealth knew better of course, The Stone Tapes and that pesky Cannibal Holocaust which the Director's of BWP finally confessed to having been influenced by, but at least Sanchez and team brought the concept to the mainstream and indirectly gave us the ongoing Paranormal Activity series of movies. Whether or not that is a good thing I leave to individual readers to determine. Having sent the grossly undervalued Altered (2006) our way, Sanchez returns to found footage with the Indie shocker Lovely Molly, and to be honest the Director's return to his traditional stomping grounds is to mix effects. Let's toss this one in some olive oil and see what eventuates.

Sanchez cheats to a certain extent with Lovely Molly, he films in traditional style for much of the movie's running time but dispenses with anything like scene construction or total control of what you are seeing in each frame. It's like a found footage movie being shot on Hollywood blockbuster cameras, and I was digging the approach. If you really want to get into the horror trenches then make your characters average people, and for Christ sake keep away from Boredwood casting agents throwing good looking twenty some things at the screen. It never works; here Sanchez has a group of blue collared folk that are readily believable in their roles. Everyone should watch the first ten or so minutes of this movie to see how freaky bad Timmy "come out of the closet" Cruise was in War of the Worlds, Lovely Molly rang true, Cruise's movie was Boredwood Producers pretending to know what happens off Rodeo drive. So what we have is believable blue collar workers being filmed in normal mode, but with a distinct found footage styling. It's certainly a unique approach.

Sanchez is taking some risks with the movie but over complicates the script in an attempt to be clever

Sanchez does of course hit the normal shaking hand helds to get to grips with his subject matter and to make things slightly more personal than one might expect. Molly has her handy cam present during some freak out scenes, and in a twist that should have you high fiving the bats in the belfry she is often filming herself, due to a possible possession angle going down. I was nodding my head in approval with the approach, and in some sequences I'm going to say I readily unnerved. So found footage fans should be in their element here, Sanchez serves up some nice chilling elements with the character held cams, and in one scene that goes Entity on us.

Of course this all wouldn't have held together if we didn't have the plot and story lines to back up the filming approach. Sanchez and fellow scribe Jamie Nash have something of a mystery to unravel, there's a lot more background information than one might initially think, and things will go into surprising places. Molly is a recovered drug addict; this is touch upon, with her character definitely toward the susceptible side of the drawing room. Just how much of what we are seeing is going on in Molly's fractured mind, and just how much is due to a possible malevolent force in the house? Sanchez and Nash aren't saying, so make your own mind up, but stick with the movie out till the final scene before making a decision either way.

In terms of scare tactics, Sanchez borrows a bunch of stuff from BWP and it has to be said from the Paranormal Activity franchise. Not complaining over here, the trad tactics are still the bomb in my unwanted opinion. So we even get a wink to Heather's monologue from Blair Witch in the opening. The night vision stuff just dialled up the tension quota, just what might be out there in the darkened hallway. Creaking doors, things going bump in the night, and the always freaky POV from something staring in from the darkness. Sanchez knows what he is about and throws some sinister scenes our way, look for a security cam at Molly's work for something that isn't taking prisoners.

Letting down the movie is the overly convoluted script that is going to lose a lot of viewers through the course of festivities. We got drug addiction, sexual abuse, and clearly mental illness going down. Mixed into that potent blend is a possible haunting, what appears to be possession, a good dose of demonic mythos, and the topping on this slice of pie, murder most foul. The problem being the script isn't constructed in any meaningful way, I was confused through the middle block of the movie, thought I might have it sussed by the closing credits, but then decided it was all too nihilistic to bother checking back again. Ideas are thrown at the screen with the Audience pretty much left to siphon up whatever sticks. While I'm all for a movie forcing Viewers to think about what they are seeing, Lovely Molly spends its entire running time being as obtuse as possible.

Gretchen Lodge pretty much carries the movie throughout, delivering one hell of a striking performance in the process. And yes Ms Lodge does get her gear off, leaving nothing to the imagination. It must have been one hell of a role to play, Molly is very intense - and off the planet on occasion, but Lodge nails it, making me for one hoping to catch her in something more traditional.

Guess we just covered the T&A, gorehounds are going to be rocking along, there is some blood being splashed on the canvas. Don't go in expecting an Eli Roth gorenography outing however, Sanchez is much too good a Director to get caught up in that style of covering over the cinematic cracks.

Special mention of the soundscape by Chicago outfit Tortise, a lot of the suspense and tension in the movie is delivered by a soundtrack that is pretty unrelenting.

A few of the boys dialled into Lovely Molly before I got to the movie, and the feeling was that the movie was too intense for its own good. I dialled in one evening, nothing else much going, and found Sanchez's latest to be trying to be way too clever for its own good. A more approachable script could have delivered a better movie, I found myself missing a lot of nuances as I tried to figure out what was going down. The movie is dark, deals in some nasty themes, and if I had to sum the flick up in one word that word would be "bleak". Worth a look if you like intense horror outings, but pretty meh otherwise. No real recommendation folks, you will either like this movie or hate it to death.

Lovely Molly is available from all outlets, rental places, and most retailed outfits. Knock yourself out, it shouldn't be hard to locate.