Lizzie Borden Took an Ax

What a great story! Spinster daughter, faced with penurious life because inheritance could go to hated stepmother, is accused of killing stepmother and father with an ax. Why tart up film with weird atmospheric sounds, hip music, and unhistorical hints of incestuous emotions. A straight telling of events emphasizing the dependent role of women in the 19th century, the inability of society to accept that women could kill parents,and other legal and cultural aspects of Victorian America would have been enough. Christina Ricci, skillful actor though she is, seems to be reprising her role as the evil child in the Addams Family. She really needs to dial back the wide eyed penetrating stares and consider other ways to convey emotion. Clea Duvall, Lizzie's sister, was a standout. Not only did she looking a person of the late 19th century, she acted as one. Would that Christina Ricci had done the same.

What a disappointing film.

I'm just going to get this off my chest right away.

What was with that abhorrent soundtrack? This would've been a much better movie if it weren't for that awful music. Seriously. Rock & Roll? Stuff that sounds like grunge metal? In a movie that's set in the late 1800s? That makes *awesome* sense! Not.

If you can get past the soundtrack and give it a chance, it's a decent movie. I didn't really care for Christina Ricci, she just didn't seem that believable to me, but Billy Campbell was pretty good; though I've seen him in better things.

I just can't get over that soundtrack though. Yuck. It made an OK movie nearly unwatchable. My advice: Don't waste your time on this one.

Closely follows the real story, as well as being an adequate remake of the 1975 TV version with Elizabeth Montgomery in the titular role. (Her performance was much more nuanced and provided significant ambiguity regarding Lizzie's actual guilt.) Christina Ricci is in fine form; the locations and costumes are accurate to the period; and overall, it should have been a good movie. The operative here being "should"......

However, the movie has been trashed by a nerve-wracking soundtrack. The utterly incongruous heavy rock music is totally inappropriate! This is NOT a movie meant to have a contemporary "feel" to it! It's like trying to watch Swan Lake with the soundtrack from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Whoever decided this was the way to go for a period movie had rocks in their head!

I just finished watching this movie and i thought it was a really great production for lifetime TV movie. I actually think it could've been released in theatre's.

The acting was well done. This movie was also very good at maintaining suspense.

the only criticism was some of the music they chose which was not suited for the era this movie was set in.

I read some other posts on here that agree about the music but i don't think bad music should create so much negativity on what looked like a good production overall.

Having said that...the reasons why my views on this movie might be more positive than others is because

• i watch a lot of lifetime movies and felt as though this film was much better than the typical lifetime TV movie.

• i never watched the original movie made in the 1975 with Elizabeth Montgomery

• i haven't followed the original case so i didn't have any ideas on what or how this movie should be like.

so if you are like me... and come into the movie without any idea about this case or the history of it. you might enjoy it.

My wife and I both enjoyed this movie, and she had just recently read a book on the case. The story was well-told and left open for interpretation, for most of the movie, to whether she was guilty or not. The acting was excellent and the period costumes were as well. However, whoever allowed this soundtrack to be used tried their best to ruin the whole experience. I don't think a thriller/mystery set in 1892 should have 21st-century electric/amplified rock music inserted, especially in the first half of the movie. To have a scene or a transition of a movie set in the 1890's interrupted by an amplified guitar and keyboards with the nauseating "Oooooo, boy!" was not only ridiculous, after a while we started laughing and wondering when the next inappropriate music would come bursting in. Overall, however, it's a very good TV movie.