An American Haunting PG-13

An American Haunting
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Format:  DVD
item number:  CVES
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DVD Details

  • Rated: PG-13
  • Run Time: 1 hours, 31 minutes
  • Video: Color
  • Encoding: Region 1 (USA & Canada)
  • Released: October 24, 2006
  • Originally Released: 2006
  • Label: Lions Gate

Performers, Cast and Crew:

Starring , &
Performer: , , , , , , &
Directed by
Edited by
Screenwriting by
Composition by
Produced by &
Director of Photography:

Entertainment Reviews:

Rotten14%

TOMATOMETER
Total Count: 70

Spilled35%

AUDIENCE SCORE
User Ratings: 89,135
Rating: 2/5 -- Unoriginal and unrelenting, this gothic ghost story invests too much time in banging doors and billowing drapes and not enough in its characters. Full Review
BBC.com
Jun 3, 2006
This is one of the more annoying, irritating, obnoxiously un-scary scary movies in recent memory.
Ebert & Roeper
May 8, 2006
Rating: 1/4 -- This is the type of movie that you should be getting for free on television.
San Francisco Chronicle
May 5, 2006
Rating: 1.5/4 -- There's thunder and lightning and wall-to-wall music. But it still doesn't add up to much of a movie.
Newark Star-Ledger
May 5, 2006
Takes the most documented ghost story in history and doesn't create one truly scary moment.
UGO
Mar 24, 2007
it becomes haunted by the unwelcome presence of heavy-handedness, making it seem more like a busy domestic melodrama (with a ghost) than a truly unnerving chiller. Full Review
Eye for Film
Jul 2, 2007
Rating: C- -- The frights are few and the moment of horrific revelation is a big letdown in writer/director Courtney Solomon's cinematic treatment of Brent Monahan's novel "The Bell Witch: An American Haunting." Full Review
ColeSmithey.com
Apr 19, 2009

Product Description:

Based on the book AN AMERICAN HAUNTING by Brent Monahan, this horror movie uses a current-day setting (the year 2006) as a framing device for a ghost story dating back to 1817 Tennessee. Inspired by manuscripts documenting the only spirit-caused death in U.S. history, the film stars accomplished actors Sissy Spacek and Donald Sutherland as the mother and father of Betsy Bell (Rachel Hurd-Wood), an adolescent girl tormented by a mysterious spirit haunting the Bell family home. The spirit is thought to have been sent by Mrs. Batts, a witchlike neighbor who, after having a bitter dispute over property rights with Betsy's father, John Bell, put a curse on John and his daughter. Even though John Bell was the one at fault, it is his daughter who bears the heaviest burden of this spell, being thrown about her room nightly, slapped, and even sexually abused by the mystical force in question. Most of the film takes place in the home, where Betsy's parents, a local priest, and a local schoolteacher (with whom she has a flirtatious relationship) try their best to exorcise the demons away. While the film never fully explains what the spirit is or where it came from, it does propose one disturbing theory near the end that involves the hysterical nature of young female sexuality. But despite being used as a means to connect the present-day story with the 1817 events, this theme is only vaguely hinted at as the story unravels.

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Product Info

  • Sales Rank: 127,385
  • UPC: 012236203483
  • Shipping Weight: 0.20/lbs (approx)
  • International Shipping: 1 item

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