Morella

The dark and ominous music was the highlight of this exercise in predictability. In Poe's original Morella, the narrator's wife dies giving birth to her daughter. In this mediocre modernized telling, Morella is a genetic scientist who creates a clone of herself before dying. While Poe's text was full of eloquence (The days have never been when thou couldst love me- but her whom in life thou didst abhor, in death thou shalt adore), this script is driven by pretentious voice-overs. The movie tries too hard to be moody and creepy, and ends up being cheesy.

This movie was so absurd it was hysterical. Okay, its the near future and this genius geneticist creates a clone of her screwed up self before she dies. Somehow this clone becomes the child of her on job paramour (Guest) and then everything goes straight to hell. The clone (Sarah) does the typical Bad Seed faire complete with cloying choir music and jarring violins. Add to this the annoying preponderace of poorly lit sets and the occasional but pompous narration and you have a film that literally drains the life out of you as you watch. I wouldn't recommend it not even on a whim.

The story of Morella is not one of Edgar Allen Poe's better known works, but it lacks nothing of the poetic spine-tingling terror that Poe was famous for. This version of the story, however, is silly and pretentious. I suspect that the makers of this film intended it to be "arty", but the result is actually more confusing and annoying.

I have never much been impressed with Nicholas Guest's acting ability, but I have to say that I was impressed with the English accent that he effected for this role (although I probably shouldn't be as his father was a member of the British House of Lords there by making him half English). His normal voice is not too dissimilar from his brother Christopher's, but the change he makes somehow alters him so that he is not recognizable. I had to push the button on the remote several times to verify via the on-screen channel guide that it was actually him.

Everyone else in this film seems very one dimensional including Angela Jones as Morella who hams it up so annoyingly that you almost want to slap her. Her acting range is limited to the number of different ways that one can be overtly seductive on screen. The chemistry between her and Guest is almost nonexistant there by making his character's claim that her character is the love of his life not ring very true.

On top of all this, the director decided to shoot this film with minimal lighting. While one can suppose that he means to make it more "spooky" or "mysterious" that way, all he really succeeds in doing is making it more difficult to see most of the sets and some of the actors.

I think it is probably a good thing Poe is already dead because this film would finish him for sure.

This may be unfair because we only watched the first 25 minutes of this movie. I am the kind of person who NEVER turns off movies I've paid for, but this was a first. Not only were we so disgusted with the movie we turned it off not even half-way through, we went out and rented another to get the memory of this movie out of our minds. This was a great story idea gone very, very bad with HORRIBLE acting, bad camera work, and script caliber of no more than USA Up All Night.

Morella is definitely not one of the big movies but never the less it is worth watching. Though the characterplay lacks some depth Morella captivates with the mood, scenery, the pictures however you might call it. The style reminds me a litle bit of the games "Silent Hill" or "Another Day in the Dark". Although the film plays in the early 21st century, it looks more like 1920-30 with a litle bit of 1990 laboratories-in-sf-films design and a few gimmicks, which come from the 21st century - a really nice and intriguing mix! The story is interesting and spooky though I don't know the original by E.A.Poe so that I can not say wether the film lives up to the story... Morella is definitely not a film for everyone. Lots will not like it and say it is boring because M is no popcorn-film and not for the great audience. But I enjoyed it...