Lovely Molly

A newly-wed couple move to a new home. This place was the childhood house of the wife, Molly. She experienced some trauma there as a child. Immediately on arrival strange frightening things begin to occur. As a recovering heroin addict, the terrifying events are put down by some to be the result of her returning to drugs. Her husband is mostly away from home because of his work, leaving Molly on her own. She films many things on a hand-held camera.

The latest film from Eduardo Sánchez, one of the co-directors of The Blair Witch Project, is a different kind of horror film from that one but with similarities. The film opens á la Blair Witch with a close up of a woman who is filming herself; she is in terror for reasons not yet understood. The videotaped material which appears throughout is generally a clear nod to that famous film. But that's where the similarities end, as Lovely Molly is a much more traditional supernatural horror movie. It's one of those films where the set-up allows for several possible answers to the unknown terror. Is the source of Molly's trauma the supernatural? Her inner demons? Is it drug-induced? By the end of the movie there are answers of sorts, although there remains an enigmatic quality. The audience are allowed to piece things together themselves. It's one of those pictures that you want to watch again after a first viewing to try to put together all the pieces of the puzzle.

Gretchen Lodge is excellent in the central role. It's a part which demands some emotionally fraught moments. Lovely Molly is all about the central character, most of everything is told from her perspective. Another significant contributing factor is the soundtrack. It's very eerie but it isn't typical horror music. The score is by the band Tortoise who are one of the pioneers of post-rock. The atmospherics they help create are pretty significant here; discordant humming and threatening sounds. Add to this the little weird details such as the horses' heads, the disconnected scenes of the neighbouring family or the weird shrine in the cellar. There are a lot of things to spook you out.

This has to go down as an excellent return to the horror genre by Sánchez. It has a good balance of suspense, mystery, weirdness and dramatics to ensure that Lovely Molly is one of the more interesting horror efforts of late.

Director Eduardo Sánchez begins his newest spooky feature Lovely Molly with a deliberate shout out the the film that brung him here, The Blair Witch Project (co-directed with Daniel Myrick). A crying woman confesses into a videocamera, capturing herself in a moment of distress and hoping to leave a clue to be discovered after she inevitably succumbs to an off-screen terror. Sánchez hasn't returned exactly to his old stomping ground of first-person documentary horror - Lovely Molly is for the most part a spooky old fashioned psyche-out horror film - but it's a nice touch in a film filled with them.

Molly and new husband Tim (Gretchen Lodge and Johnny Lewis) are ripped from sleep in their new inherited home by a squalling alarm. Someone has opened their back door and is thumping around in the kitchen, but police find nothing out of the ordinary and chalk it up to the wind despite Tim's insistence that he locked the door.

He's a truck driver, and is away from home for stretches of time in which Molly is left alone to deal with a growing malignancy, a presence in the house that manifests itself as sung voices, crying children, clomping horse hooves and slamming doors. Molly's afraid to reach out to her sister or husband for help, fearing that they'll assume she's lapsed back into substance abuse. She instead begins to videotape her encounters, and it's this footage, as well as taped footage of someone stalking neighbours and visiting an odd underground shrine of some sort, that forms the frightening backbone of the film.

As Sánchez himself claimed in a post-screening q&a, the film is as much an "indie relationship" film and "actor's piece" as horror film. The entire weight of the film is on newcomer Lodge's back and she pulls the whole thing off dazzlingly well, transforming from a slight, trembling girl into a stalking, haunted and threatening woman crawling through an empty house. It's a performance good enough, combined with Sánchez's legitimate gift for crafting arresting moments of weird, totemic and animalistic horror, to transcend the film's kind of tired "is it a ghost or a hallucination" set-up, and take the whole thing into straight-up spooky, straight-up original territory.

OK, so I know the reviews for this one have been pretty mixed, but for fans of psychological horror that don't mind an ambiguous story line, I highly recommend Lovely Molly. As a massive horror enthusiast who sees EVERYTHING, I can tell you there are only a few films per year that have the ability to get under my skin, and this is one of them. Although not a particularly sadistic or violent film, Molly's (newcomer Gretchen Lodge) descent into depravity is entirely convincing in a very realistic and unpleasant manor. Her back story is left intentionally vague, which makes the proceedings much more horrific. As horror fans we all know the downfall of over exposition...once we know exactly whats going on it's just not scary anymore. To say much more about the story could hinder one's viewing experience but I will say to make sure you CRANK your surround system or watch with headphones because the sound design is a vital part of the film. Many scenes feature sonic subtleties which could easily be missed, and constant attention to detail (take note of the crackle heard every time Molly drags a cigarette). So anyways, Lovely Molly has my vote for one of the year's best in horror, and I can't wait to see what's next for both Sanchez and Lodge.

Molly (Gretchen Lodge) is a janitor who marries Tim (Johnny Lewis), a long distance truck driver. They move into her old family home, but since Tim is away a lot of the time, it leaves Molly alone with her unpleasant memories of her youth; obsessed with filming things, she comes to believe that there is some unholy, spectral presence in the house.

Commendably, Eduardo Sanchez, best known for "The Blair Witch Project", never dips his toes all the way into supernatural waters, preferring to leave us with an ambiguous take on a young woman losing her sanity and her health. This is also a young woman so deeply traumatized that it doesn't take much to send her over the edge. Indeed, she is a former junkie who is soon using once again. And Tim and Molly's sister Hannah (Alexandra Holden) are at their wits' end trying to cope with Molly's behaviour.

The film does keep visual effects to a bare minimum, but gives lovers of more visceral horror some good gore to enjoy. What "Lovely Molly" really is, is a good "slow burn" type of psychological horror film, the kind we don't get all that often in an era where genre cinema typically depends on jump scares. One of its main assets is the sound design, which Sanchez had perfected with BWP and a minimal budget. It's guaranteed to keep some viewers on edge. The other major point of interest is a gripping, bravura central performance by Lodge, who makes Molly sympathetic enough to sustain the films' 100 minute run time. But the acting from all of the principals is engaging, including Field Blauvelt as the genial Pastor Bobby.

Location shooting in Maryland, cinematography, production design, and music are all well done, but ultimately take a back seat to the journey undertaken by our haunted main character.

Seven out of 10.

I rarely criticise a movie for its technical choices rather than its script or character development. However, this instance stands out, as I find it necessary to commend the storyline for addressing some sensitive (and significant) subject matters but cannot and will not extend the same degree of appreciation to its execution on the broader level.

The mixed style, continuously oscillating between found footage and conventional cinematography was frustrating. A more decisive approach in selecting one particular style would have benefited the script I reckon.

Regarding the narrative, I was captivated by how it gradually builds tension while delving into darker themes. The darkness is pursued, not rushed into and it embraces it completely as we reach conclusion.

Incorporation of psychological trauma with a suggested entity of malevolence was a genuinely ingenious idea that could have yielded a superior outcome had it not been executed in such a technically as well as tonally convoluted way.

Before I finish I must specifically mention the performance of Gretchen Lodge in the lead role. She delivered an outstanding portrayal of a woman showing scars of past trauma and slowly descending into madness, which was quite impressive for a film of this scope and ambition.