A Southern Haunting

I REALLY wanted to love this movie! At least LIKE it! The story it was built on SHOULD have worked! It's a new story, a new idea that has actual roots in truth mixed with the mythology of "Southern supernatural" and...by golly... Almost a ghost story that writes itself!

So how'd it end up being this mess?

Whoever wrote it can't seem to keep a cohesive thought together! Or write it down into a script that others can bring to life. The IDEA is terrific. But someone else seriously needs to write it and then someone else needs to execute it into a script then have good actors work it then ..

Because this was a pile of WTH mess.

Waste of time! Only thing saving it was I got some laundry done.

Whomever wrote, produced, filmed, created, or even acted in this movie should rethink this. The movie is not a horror, it's slow to watch, and confusing to follow.

I only continued watching it due to the female actress (Older daughter). I would love to be able to get my wasted time back, but I can't.

This was a horrible movie I would hope they wouldn't make another movie like this.

I have nothing else to say about the movie other than I wish I would not have seen it.

I actually thought the movie was made back in the early 2000's. I can't believe this movie was made in 2023. I could sworn they switched out the actors.

Right, well as I sat down to watch this 2023 horror movie, it was with the release title of "A Southern Haunting", so I figured that I would be in for a ghost movie. However, the title of this movie from writer and directors M. J. Anderson and T. Huff is 40, and that is also what was shown on the screen, during the title sequence of the movie. So the title "A Southern Haunting" was rather misguiding.

The storyline in "40" was somewhat dull and slow paced. It wasn't a particularly interesting storyline, though it was semi-watchable for what it turned out to be. However, I was expecting more of an ordinary haunting movie, instead I was treated to a slow paced tale of former slaves gaining their freedom, but come to acquire some cursed lands. Sure, it sounds interesting enough, but writers and directors M. J. Anderson and T. Huff just never kicked the movie up into any gear.

I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in the movie, but given the circumstances of the weak script, then the actors and actresses actually fared well enough.

Visually, then you're not in for anything spectacular. There were a little bit of special effects throughout the course of the 94 minutes that the movie ran for, but nothing noteworthy or memorable.

All in all, the movie is a rather forgettable movie, and not one I would recommend for horror fans to rush out and get to watch.

My rating of "40" lands on a generous four out of ten stars.

Not a thriller nor a horror movie. I don't think the other reviews are for this movie. Nothing in those other reviews happened in this movie. Looks like it was shot on a phone. I think they just created as much of a story as they could and then started filming. I hate to bash what the crew and actors did but this is not worth the time we took to see it. We kept waiting for it to make sense but it just never gets there. Since it's based around the historical and famous underground railroad from civil war times, I thought it might have some redeeming qualities, but it just doesn't. It struggles with acting, lighting, story, and overall plot.

So it's super obvious two white dudes wrote and directed this, which I don't think should've been allowed. Their "authenticity" and "knowledge" when it comes to racism and slavery feels like it was ripped from a wikihow article or an american history class. Terrible. Any review giving it higher than garbage is lying or is being paid to say so. I see 9/10 and 10/10's and to those people- you either were watching an entirely different movie or are both fortunately blind and deaf. While the actors were great, their efforts were completely drowned out by the insufferable script, try hard conflict, poor filming and overall high school home project vibes. Had this been written by a POC or had a POC even been talked to during the creative process this could've been a phenomenal flick.