The Marsh

I saw this film at Frightfest in London and it was by far and away the worst film that I saw over the weekend. Everyone that I spoke to at the festival agreed that it was a stinker so I'm not sure who posted on here giving it 10/10 and saying it was awesome?! Can you spell PR agent? On the plus side the effects were good, the direction wasn't bad and the acting was generally sufficient (given what they had to work with).

On the down side was everything else. The plot was clichéd, hokey, difficult to follow and incredibly boring! The dialogue was amateurish at times and generally cringe worthy throughout. Worst of all (and this is clearly the cardinal sin of a horror film) it wasn't remotely scary. Even the occasional BOO! would have been appreciated... but no.

The director is young and seemed like an affable young chap who I'm sure will progress in the industry. He will look back on this with embarrassment (if it ever gets released, fingers crossed not). He did seem like he'd had budget and studio constraints as evidenced by the fact that when I asked him the likely rating of the film in the Q&A after the screening he replied, "y'know... PG-13... gotta keep it marketable".

That summed up the extreme rubbishness of this film. Billed as a supernatural thriller it's preternaturally dull. If you want to see a half decent film of this type check out something like "Skeleton Key"... and if anyone thought that was bad (which I didn't, but I know it has its critics) then woo... really don't go and see 'The Marsh'!

OK, now here is a ghost story that came way under my radar and turns out to be a superior ghost story with a couple of twists. A lady children's book author is plagued with nightmares of a little girl disappearing in a swamp and images of an old house. When viewing a television story, she notices the house in her nightmare and the surrounding area, specifically a marsh where she keeps seeing and following this little girl. She tracks down the property and moves into the house, in a small remote area close to a little town. After installing a door she finds in the cellar, strange things begin to happen and what were her nightmares are now becoming too real. Yes, the house and the marsh hold deep secrets in the town and the house, and she enlists the help of a local paranormal consultant played very well by Forest Whitaker. He moves into her house with his equipment and quickly realizes the supernatural is at work. This movie succeeds on every level with excellent performances, and a very tight story that keeps you guessing until the final reveal. Are her nightmares really lost memories of a past she has forgotten, and if she is the little girl ghost then how is that possible? All the questions are answered, and I had a real ball with this one. Highly recommended.

***Contains Spoilers*** I can't quite believe the previous review. I have also just seen The Marsh at London's Frightfest and I and my friends were wholly unimpressed.

It feels like another film in a long line of by-the-numbers supernatural thrillers that have come out of Hollywood in the last five years such as Stir of Echoes, Hide and Seek, Secret Window, The Sixth Sense, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Skeleton Key, The Mothman Prophecies, Bless the Child, The Forgotten, The Others etc, etc (Some of these films are quite good, but you get my point)

I have become very bored of creepy houses (this one was particularly un-imaginative) creepy cornfields, creepy little girls in night dresses, creepy dolls and scarecrows, creepy children's drawings, creepy children's songs, windows blowing open in gusts of wind etc, etc

It is also frustrating when EVERYTHING vaguely frightening is accompanied by a thunderous drum beat, even things like a shot of a child's teddy bear hitting the floor during a flashback! This device seemed to be the only means of creating any scares.

While this film was very professionally made it was very well-worn and tedious, with a series of flashbacks and revelations about something terrible which happened in the protagonist's past. The set in particular was not good and most of the flashbacks centered around a stained glass window in a door which was entirely modern and looked like it could be bought in any home improvements store.

The ultimate villain-ghost that is finally revealed to have triggered the events is actually just a rather misguided and pathetic character so when they came over all demonic at the end it rang really hollow for me.

The events themselves which triggered the haunting were, once again, rather unimportant yet predictable and wholly unoriginal.

A by-the-numbers money spinner in my opinion

THE MARSH is yet another scary movie to satisfy the apparently inexhaustible demand for fright films of this genre. It is obviously a low budget film that suffers from a silly script resurrecting tired themes of communication with ghosts and the intervention of paranormal specialists.

Successful children's book author and illustrator Claire Holloway (Gabrielle Anwar) is besieged by recurrent nightmares that prompt her therapist to recommend a sabbatical, advice she heeds as she moves out into the country to a little creepy town called Marshville. She rents a old house near the marsh from a woman Mercy (Brooke Johnson) and discovers from the local newspaper editor Noah (Justin Louis) that the town is riddled with history of hauntings following the disappearance of a little girl into the marshes, the victim of sexual assault that has never been adequately investigated. Claire's time in her new 'home' is racked with appearances of the dead little girl and her muddy perpetrator and she finally seeks the help of a Paranormal expert Hunt (Forest Whitaker) who helps her solve the etiology of Claire's nightmares and provides an exit for the ghosts.

Most of the film is dark with poor Claire just wandering around the creepy house with her open-mouthed/wide-eyed frightened look, avoiding the flying detritus caused by the angry spirits that haunt her. Gabrielle Anwar is beautiful to look at but is not really called upon to act. Likewise Forest Whitaker is paralyzed by an inept script that even this fine actor can't overcome. The music is the canned, synthesizer variety and the camera work is jerky and gets in the way of the story. This is a movie for avid fans of scary flicks who can overlook the multiple production and writing problems. Grady Harp

THE MARSH is an absolutely typical ghost story about a lonely woman moving into a lonely house that turns out to be haunted by...yada yada. The end result is that it plays out exactly as you'd expect, featuring the few unlucky actors to be caught up in this mess finding themselves at the mercy of various CGI-augmented spirits whose appearance has been crafted in the most ordinary way.

The script is poor and the direction worse, with none of the creative people involved failing to make anything of the premise. It says much that my memory of the film is already fading, at a rapid pace, a mere 24 hours after I watched it. Gabrielle Anwar (THE TUDORS) fails to bring life to a rather stiff and uninteresting lead character and seems to be trying to get her American accent right rather than delivering a decent performance. Forest Whitaker (PHONE BOOTH) appears slightly befuddled and is probably wondering what he's doing caught up in this nonsense.

Because this is nonsense, I'll make no bones about it. Every haunted house cliché in the book is played out, from the restless ghost of a kid (a little blonde girl, of course) to the vengeful spirit with the scary eyes. The jump scenes are predictable as is the rest of the plot and the effects are poor, taking you out of the movie every time they pop up. A dismal effort, this.