A Christian-horror story.
Written and directed by Michael O. Sajbel
With: Jackson Hurst as Dennis Lukens, Ali Hillis as Katie Lukens, Lance Henriksen as Fr. Ehrlich, Catherine Frances as Lucy Lukens
I confess I continued watching this train wreck beyond my usual 15-minute limit for dull movies because I had a vague acquaintance with the writer/director back in the 1970s. He owes me for the 90 minutes of my life wasted on this dreck. I will take payment in the coin of my choosing.
I am surprised he would select a Christian horror movie to write and direct. When I knew him, his lone ambition seemed to be a Beverly Hills address North of Sunset Blvd. Perhaps he decided to reinvent himself for economic purposes. If so, he is hardly the first creature of Hollywood to do so, and likely not the last. I doubt the public in these times of superhero movies was clamoring for a ghost story this banal. This basic premise is not bad however; a house haunted by the spirit of an unborn child.
The story is an unfocused mess involving bumps in the night, previously undiscovered rooms, and an ancient pagan god run amok, escaped from the pages of the Old Testament. The nearest comparison to a good horror movie, that is, would be the 1944 Lewis Allen directed ghost story, The Uninvited with Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey.
The two leads here are competent enough actors, they can deliver the ludicrous lines without bursting into laughter, but they enjoy no direction, set adrift by their director. They are standing on the same set, but seem to be in different movies. The direction lacks the two most important qualities necessary for a supernatural suspense thriller: suspense and an expectation of the worst to come. The expectation here is a cure for insomnia.
Lance Henriksen is woefully miscast as a blind Catholic priest. (apparently the production could afford his services for only a single week’s shooting) Not even an actor of his skill can sell the absurd dialogue he is allowed.
Catherine Frances performance as the spook-affected daughter is almost a case of child abuse. She has no screen presence and cannot act a lick. Not a bad actor, but not an actor at all. She is the victim of a minor and irrelevant story thread involving an obese homicidal pedophile in a pathetic and offensive attempt to connect pedophilia and abortion. You know things are amiss when the Catholic Church attempts to take the moral high ground. It seems at times pedophilia must be a class required at Catholic seminary.
The ghost of the story has all the attributes of Casper the Friendly ghost, except animation. The opening shot of leaves blown along by a supernatural wind seems to have been borrowed from Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1970 film The Conformist. I hope the comparison does not taint Bertolucci’s masterpiece in the mind of the reader.
The self-righteous-saved-by-Jesus-anti-reproductive-freedom crowd is fond of calling itself “pro-life”. This is like Nazi’s calling themselves “the master race”. I would have expected this writer/director would have made a better picture, competent in screen story and direction and without the distracting sound of a grinding axe. He is a graduate of the prestigious UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, made excellent guacamole I recall, and was generous with his scotch.
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