The only horror about this was (fill in blank)
Molly Hartley was suppose to die, and nearly did. Her mother nearly killed her with a pair of scissors. Her father has been trying to keep her safe away from her insane mom, by moving from town to town. Uprooted and never comfortable, Molly finds herself at a high school that cares and doesn’t care. Supported and verbally abused, her uncomfortable life just gets worse as she starts to have visions of her insane mom trying to kill her again. Ultimately, she’s not sure why but there is something about Molly that is unusual. It’s so unusual that she soon finds out the truth about why people don’t like her or how they’re trying to kill her.
I know what you’re thinking, “That’s a horrible description of the film.” Actually, that’s an accurate description of the film. Never in my life have I walked away from a film scratching my head thinking, “Not sure what happened.” Honestly, the last time I can recall this feeling was with David Lynch’s Lost Highway, but it was confusing for artistic purposes. The Haunting of Molly Hartley was quite possibly the worst film I have seen in my lifetime. This certainly challenges Loose Cannons for the number spot, in my mind at least. Let me break this film down to you.
The flaws of the film come in such a distorted order that I’m going to try to put it together to make sense. I understand that the film was going for the Rosemary’s Baby type of theme. You weren’t sure what was wrong with poor Molly, but you can understand that it has something to do with evil. This was never, ever, ever explained. It was on the tip of the writer’s pen, but it never got put on paper. So, that’s a huge deal. There’s nothing like putting your audience through a storyline that never gets explained. That’s very inexcusable. Second, there was an issue of Molly’s mom being a vision and Molly’s mom being an actual person. The film didn’t really decide on what she was and really threw everyone for a loop when she suddenly, actually appeared as a person. Instead of going back and wanting to watch the film to decide this, you’ll want to write it off as just poor decision making when it came to plot points. That’s so damn confusing and not in a Sixth Sense sort of way. Another example of confusing, you have Molly (towards the end of the film) running away from the Jesus freak character and suddenly bumping into her boyfriend (? — never played out) out of the blue. He takes her to his house for safety purposes (because you never know who is going to try to kill her next… seriously, you don’t have any idea) and suddenly has a cake for her for her birthday. The chances of randomly running into someone and having a birthday cake for them is pretty huge. Let’s backtrack a second and talk about the origin of her mysteriousness. They explain that she was born in a Burger King bathroom (kudos to Digital Underground) and her parents nearly lose her during the birth. Instead of dying, they make a promise with a mysterious evil woman, who apparently hangs out at Burger King bathrooms, that if she saves their baby’s life she can have her when she turns 18 (or something warped like that). That’s the origin, decide for yourselves.
The storyline is unforgivable, the acting is horrid, there are three scary moments in the film and there really isn’t a traditional ‘haunting’ in the film.
There we have it. I don’t like being mean, but I cannot hold it back. This is just bad filmmaking all around.
Features for your pleasure
You get a set of features that consist of the following:
– AnnaLynne McCord featurette
– Mickey Liddell (director) featurette
– Haley Bennett featurette
– Shanna Collins featurette
– Theatrical Trailer
You do get some insight about how people felt about their characters and what the director was shooting for. You can’t dislike them for their efforts, but you can dislike their efforts. The features are decent.