"Shadow Play" follows struggling playwright Morgan Hanna, who is still reeling from the apparent suicide of her husband seven years ago, in which he leapt from a lighthouse on his family's property in the San Juan Islands of Washington. At the urging of her former mother-in-law, she decides to spend the summer there to get some writing done...but quickly finds a number of distractions, such as her ex-brother-in-law pursuing her, as well as the ghost of her dead husband appearing to her in reflections.
This little-seen late '80s supernatural thriller has all the cornerstones of a good made-for-TV movie, even though it isn't one: An unsolved death, tarot cards, an ominous lighthouse, ghosts, chain-smoking writers, hazy flashback sequences, an overwrought synth score, and a steamy sex scene in its center. Taken on those terms, the film delivers with more melodrama than you could ever possibly need. The problem? It's just not that eventful. Writer-director Susan Shadburne's script has some musings within it about the writing process and how grief is sublimated into work, but the narrative follows a rinse-and-repeat formula: Dee Wallace's character struggles to write, sees her husband's reflection, is terrified, finds comfort in his brother--repeat innumerably, and you have the crux of this film.
Despite this, there is plenty of fun to be had here for viewers who enjoy movies of the Lifetime ilk, and I will admit that I was taken by the nostalgia of it. The film also bolsters atmospheric locations in the San Juan Islands that are familiar to me as a native of the Pacific Northwest--the natural landscape is drenched in fog, and the familial home in which the bulk of the feature takes place is also appropriately atmospheric. Dee Wallace gives a solid if not overwrought performance here, and Cloris Leachman is great in what is essentially a throwaway role.
All in all, "Shadow Play" is a fairly redundant and uneventful film that feels undercooked at times; however, it is also a great time capsule of the period and epitomizes the melodramatic supernatural thriller/romance that one would often catch on television. A minority amusing, sometime moody, and atmospheric throwback. 6/10.
