by Thomas Ferguson

Last weekend’s gore fest Saw V splattered its way onto the big screen with an impressive 30 million dollar opening. Hoping to capitalize on the Halloween holiday is the teen horror The Haunting of Molly Hartley. Although less violent, this film targets the same Saw audience, but is this filtered version enough to bring in the true horror fans?

Molly (Haley Bennett) is a troubled young girl with a deep, dark secret. She is haunted by unexplainable voices and visions. Not to mention, the little fact that her own mother tried to kill her years earlier. Talk about Mother of the year, huh?

Her protective father relocates himself and his daughter to a new town to start life over. As we all know, life will never be the same for young Molly. Now, her visions are becoming more real and more terrifying as she approaches her 18th birthday. She tries to piece everything together, but finds distractions with her new friends, especially with the star lacrosse player Joseph Young (CW heartthrob Chace Crawford). He tries to woe our young heroine, but she’s got bigger fish to fry as you’d imagine.

Remarkably similar to 1976’s To the Devil a Daughter, The Haunting of Molly Hartley is a safe scary flick for the squeamish...you know who you are! It tries to use music and tension, not blood and guts to scare us out of our seats.

I quickly became enthralled in this puzzling story. The opening set up did its job. It instantly grabbed my attention and made me wonder what the hell was going on. The tension was palpable and the story filled me with many questions. As the story played out, the questions were still there and so was the tension. I said to myself… “Self, what is going to happen? I’m truly into this story!” Of course, it didn’t last.

When you set up a good mystery like this, the proof is in the payoff. This movie dropped the ball in the third act. The payoff was merely an excuse to end the story. Not only did it make no sense, it wasn’t even close to being climactic.

When the credits rolled I wanted to yell BOO at the screen. Not because it was Halloween, but because what started out as a great treat turned out to be a dull trick.