SnoReptilePlenty
Memorable, crazy movie
Siflutter
It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.
Humaira Grant
It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.
PartialMovieViewer
...I'm kidding...it sucked. 'Spoiler Alert, Spoiler Alert". 1800's, old house, family, evil MAN- HUSBAND, rapes daughter and she comes back as a ghost. Heard the story before? Sure you did. Man-bashing of the late 90's and early 2000's. Based on a true story? Sure and I enjoy swallowing vomit. I will say this was a clever concept the only thing missing was a writer. Plot, script, and originally were totally lost in this silly adventure. Tell me why The powers to be always have to sell out to lefty-pandering? Getting back to an earlier point, this thing was based on a real story which one? Ahhhh...you know...the one about a ghost in a house, yeah that one. Come on, all these ghost stories are loosely based on about 10 tales that are supposedly real scary stories. Wake up. Now I know some people may like this movie - why? Lack of taste maybe? Very sheltered living? Original thought for them is eating breakfasted? Or just slept through most of the movie like me? I don't know who they are or what they are taking, but keep that garbage away from me. I find it hard to believe that sissy Spacek and Donald Sutherland signed on to do this un-flushed waste. That is unfair. It did seem as though it began OK, but after a few minutes soon found its way on the road leading to Badmovieville. For me it appeared these two main stars were really suffering to complete this horrible task. So do I recommend this movie? Let's see you have read my review so far and you have questions - really? Well then sure go ahead and watch this movie in demand to pay twice the price...you deserve it.
blakkdog
So just to be clear, there's no actual ghost or demonic presence in this movie at all. No curse and no real haunting technically. The movie is basically about a living disassociated haunting. This movie reminds me of The Uninvited which also tries to pull a fast one by appearing to be a traditional ghost movie but breaks down to being only about hallucinations and lies and contains NO supernatural activity at all no matter how much its implied (or lied about in the trailers). Both movies left me feeling a bit empty because they try so hard to accomplish their respective twists of being a ghost film at the same time as NOT being a ghost film (and in fact being about psychological breakdown).This movie in particular was a muddled mess of metaphors and reality and "hauntings" melding into dreams melding into more and more and MORE scenes of "haunting trauma", many without a climax or an explanation or any kind of bridge to allow the audience to exhale and nod and think they understand whats going on and to prepare themselves for the next scene or to allow us to feel we are making even the tiniest bit of headway in dealing with the situation. Even without the molestation/disassociation twist being thrown in there, the movie got to be over the top with its continual haunting episodes without relief or the hint of a solution while this poor little girl is getting beat up and thrown around and raped and after a while seems almost catatonic with distress and no one seems able to handle the situation and the entity seems impervious to everything they try. I think it tries to be a little too much Exorcist without any of the depth of that movie. Just a lot of bed scenes of a young girl being tormented by something supernatural while her parents watch helplessly and a priest cant seem to help.But then you have the twist... which was too much for me. A living poltergeistic projection? What?? And her actually appearing as a ghost of herself at the end was absurd. Im sorry. And not sure if we really needed the book end bits from the "modern" family going through the exact same thing.
Paul Andrews
An American Haunting is set in Red River in Tennessee in 2006 where a teenage girl named Jane (Isabelle Almgren-Doré) has been having violent nightmares, her mother Elizabeth (Susan Almgren) sits down to read a diary found in their attic. The diary dates from 1817 & was written by a woman named Lucy Bell (Sissy Spacek) who lived in the house with her husband John Bell (Donald Sutherland) & their two teenage children Betsy (Rachel Hurd Wood) & John Jr. (Thom Fell). The diary tells of the terrible events which have become known as the 'The Bell Witch Haunting' & begins as John Bell is excommunicated from the local Church after being found guilty of breaking Church law by charging 20% interest on a small loan to a woman named Kathe Batts (gaye Brown) who is known to be a witch & who places a curse upon John Bell & his entire family. Soon after John's daughter Betsy is attacked at night in her bedroom by an evil ghost, the attacks continue which threaten the whole family...This British, Romanian, Canadian & American co-production was written, produced & directed by Courtney Solomon whose only other directorial credit is the much derided board game adaptation of Dungeons & Dragons (2000), An American haunting is supposedly based on a true story which this film apparently represents reasonably well but there's very little evidence to support anything in this film or the events it's based upon being true. In fact the main inspiration for An American Haunting was the novel 'The Bell Witch: An American Haunting' by Brett Monahan first published in 1995 & was clearly written & sold as a work of fiction, not fact so that just about says all you need to know how historically factual this is. To be fair to An American Haunting it's not the worst film I have ever seen, generally speaking I don't like haunted house horror flicks that much as I find they are all the same with doors opening & closing on their own, light turning on & off & loud noises coming from dark corners that usually turn out to be Cat's or windows banging & offer little variety but An American Haunting is well made & I liked the 19th Century period setting. There's a sudden twist ending which is actually a little difficult to understand as it is in the film & I admit I had to look on the IMDb's FAQ page & have it laid out for me but it does actually make sense to me now I have had it explained, it's not the greatest twist ending & it comes from nowhere as there's no real reference or hint to it anytime before but the effort is appreciated anyway. Unfortunately the script is rather bare, it goes from one loud ghostly attack to another in quick succession without really stopping to let the story develop, the character's to react to what's going on & besides the ghostly encounters there's very little else to the film beside the final twist.Available in a theatrical PG version an an Unrated cut that significantly alters the plot, much of the text from the start & end of the film is removed distancing itself from the true story claims & there are lots of changes throughout although there is no extra violence or gore, I have based my review on the Unrated version which appears to the the most widely available. The film looks nice with impressive production design, apparently the house where the film is set is an almost identical replica of the actual Bell residence recreated from historic photo's. There's lots of CGI here, shots of Betsy being dragged across her room, lifted up & slapped around with ridiculously overdone sound effects set the tone for the entire style of the film as director Solomon has no idea how to build suspense or tension & he has never heard of the word subtle either. Every other scene seems to be an attack or a cheap scare or an encounter with a ghost.With a supposed budget of about $14,000,000 this looks nice, the production design reminded me of a cheaper Sleepy Hollow (1999) with it's woods, old wooden houses & gloomy colour palette. Filmed in Bucharest in Romania & Québec in Canada despite being set entirely in the US. The acting is fine, veterans Donald Sutherland & Sissy Spacek provide decent performances while the rest of the cast are alright.An American haunting isn't as bad as I thought it would be without exactly being great either, it's an OK haunted house horror with the advantage of a good cast, nice production values & a memorable twist ending that doesn't make perfect sense but I'll take it none the less. An American Haunting could have been better sure but it could also have been a lot worse.
Wizard-8
With a title like, "An American Haunting", many viewers won't be surprised that Canadians were involved with its production. And knowing that Canadians were involved, they will have probably concluded that the movie is bad. And they would be right. I guess the production values are okay for a movie without a Hollywood blockbuster budget, but there is pretty much nothing else positive I can find here. The main problem is that there is almost no plot - it's just one ghost attack after another, with little to nothing to advance the story between these attacks. And the ghost attacks themselves are not the least bit scary. The filmmakers try to juice things up with frenzied camera movements and screaming, but this fails to liven these parts of the movie. And what does the modern day prologue/ending have to do with the bulk of the movie? The only interesting thing the movie teaches us is that ghosts like to repeatedly slap people in the face.
