Les fantômes d'Halloween

If you're expecting a typical slasher, you'll be disappointed. Frank LaLoggia's "Lady in White" is a more subtle horror flick, with limited violence and no sex or nudity. It depicts a boy who witnesses an apparition of a murder and then tries to find out what happened. The movie makes a lot of use of shadows to elicit its horror, and the answer to the mystery slowly but surely evolves. Moreover, it's also interesting to see a horror movie seen from the eyes of a child, as opposed to horny teenagers. Of course, there's no shortage of comic relief, especially from the boy's grandparents. This movie isn't any kind of masterpiece, but I still enjoyed it.

Starring Lukas Haas (the Amish boy in "Witness"), Len Cariou, Alex Rocco (Moe Greene in "The Godfather") and Katherine Helmond.

Hard to explain what's special about this movie, but it is. The exposure of the tragedy of racial prejudice and injustice is just one element.

This is a nicely done, embracing effort that has some visual elements mindful of ET. The young people are really quite believable. There are bullies, unpredictable brothers, secrets, and lots of love in a family missing a mother. This draws us into a small town which sits on the fringes of an unnamed city. A young boy sees a ghost after being locked in an elementary school cloakroom. He comes to realize it is the restless spirit of a little girl who longs to find her mother. This sets things up nicely. Unfortunately and tragically, the black janitor of the school is blamed for the assault and then charged with the murders of twelve other children. This is absurd because anyone with common sense could see that, while he could have committed the assault, he couldn't have been charged with a capital crime. The movie involves the young boy putting together the pieces, including a class ring found in a heating vent. This is a nice enough story. It's weakness is that it gets too sappy at times. I really got tired of the grandpa and his excuses to smoke. They were just overly cute. Still, it's pretty captivating and works pretty well.

Despite a few plot gaps, this is a very charming, atmospheric movie. The view is through the eyes of the main child-character, Frankie Scarlatti, and we see what he sees. This is a wonderful ghost story, not a horror film at all. Lukas Haas' character, Frankie, is vulnerable, yet determined to get at the heart of the mystery. Katherine Helmond is touchingly effective in her role as the grandmother of the murdered girl. My only complaint is that I get no clues from the plot or characterizations about what caused the killer to act. Yet I can suspend belief long enough to go with the childlike curiosity into the mysterious story. This is what I call a "little movie", no splashy special effects or over-the-top story lines, just a simple, sweet movie.

The problem I see with LADY IN WHITE is that it tries too hard to tackle several unrelated themes withing a horror movie framework. The prologue with the adult main character returning to his old hometown and the ensuing exposition about his brother and father made me think of STAND BY ME, which LADY IN WHITE is definitely not. Also, the subplot involving the African-American janitor's wrongful arrest and the subsequent events that lead to tragedy inject a race relations/civil rights theme that really is superfulous to the main plot. What's going on here? Is the filmmaker trying to make a horror film, or a coming of age film, or a social commentary on prejudice? The film could have been complex enough without all these other elements, and the heavy-handed way in which he uses them in film makes for a very muddled, busy state of affairs.