Anybody who's been subjected to my gaping maw flapping on about horror movies knows that I'm a huge fan of The Blair Witch Project, so much so that I bought a CD pitched as an alternative soundtrack to the film (which notably has no music) for a review without hesitation. While luck might have played a significant role in the film's success I still think it's one of the best horror films of the last 20 years and it's still one of all-time favorites after more than a dozen viewings. It's also a good example of a great film with two directors at the helm, first-timers Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick, who each went on to have successful solo careers in low-budget genre cinema. I've been trying to track down and watch all the movies each director separately made after Blair Witch in the hopes that they're worthwhile and the two I've seen, both directed by Sánchez, are very good and quite different from each other, and I'm reviewing both of them in the days preceding Halloween. One is a puzzle and the other a battle, so let's start with the puzzle, 2011's Lovely Molly.
No production logo, no "Some Guy Presents", nothing - the film begins with a smash cut to home video footage of Molly (Gretchen Lodge) tearfully pleading to whoever might be watching about "it"'s actions, and then puts a knife to her throat. She can't go through with it, but that's just for now. The film flashes back to Molly's recent wedding, and then to Molly's new life in her family's large, old home with her husband Tim (Johnny Lewis). Late one night their security alarm goes off and they find their front door opened, but nobody is found by the police. Molly starts exploring the house with her camcorder, making her way into an old shack and prying some floorboards up to see what's underneath. She finds a strange insignia or crest, showing two horse heads attached to a sword, and her private humming is met by unknown voices. It's not the only secret the house holds, as Molly can't bear to stay in certain rooms, especially those with pictures and knickknacks of her troubled, recently deceased parents. Molly's unease about her new living situation isn't helped by an unknown person rattling her back door so hard it makes a deafening noise, nor do her husband's frequent work-related absences and her crudbomb job as a mall custodian. The disturbances escalate, sending Molly looking into closet to find walking nightmares and filming inside her neighbors' houses late at night, and Tim returns to find her naked and freezing cold, staring at nothing, saying "he's alive." Molly's malaise turns physical as her skin takes on a clammy, dull color, she relapses into old drug habits, and someone has been following her, someone that sings to her and has hooves...someone she thought she'd never, ever see again.
If Lovely Molly is good at anything it's good at drawing the viewer into an increasing atmosphere of horrific recurrence - a return of old demons, personal and mythical, physical and habitual. The script, cowritten by Sanchez and screenwriter Jamie Nash (who debuted with the insane Christmas-themed horror comedy Two Front Teeth in 2006), deepen the thematic well of the story by using deftly intertwining narrative devices, most fascinatingly Molly's drug dependence and her need to collect evidence and confessions on video. Pretty much everybody's favorite scene from Blair Witch is the "confession" by Heather near the film's ending, her face mostly off camera and brimming with tears. Lovely Molly isn't a found footage film at all but Sanchez understood the power of characters in a horror setting who feel a need to immortalize a moment or perceived truth on film, as well as the need to be filmed themselves. What's brilliant about the camcorder footage in this film is that Molly is filming explicitly to prove what she thinks is going on to the world, but half of the footage is maddeningly inconclusive and the other half shows her in states where she's not really herself. Her relapse to addiction and increasingly erratic behavior only feed into the unreliability of her own actions to exonerate herself and expose the true nature of whatever is threatening her, and while in another film this might come across as hackneyed the elliptical, almost dizzying pace keeps the interplay fresh and the incidents unnerving and unexpected. Gretchen Lodge is another key to the film's success - even though this is her first film her performance is unhinged and deeply frightening. Another strength of Blair Witch ported to the film is the use of small incidents and running symbols to spiderweb the supernatural into existence. Everything about the Blair Witch was discovered in fragments and anecdotes, and the otherworldly being at the heart of Lovely Molly is revealed with such patience as to make its presence as evocative and ultimately overwhelming as possible. The film also manages to make a case for handheld camerawork as a platform for visual beauty, capturing dust in beams of light and creating booming interplay with contrasting focuses. And certainly not least is the piercing, behind-the-eardrum musical score by post-rock legends Tortoise, as well as the use of extremely high pitches that slip into your brain like metal slivers.
While I'm more than happy to sing Lovely Molly's praises I seem to be in a minority of people who really liked it, as it's sitting at a meager 5.3 stars on IMDB, though I'll admit that it does have small flaws, such as spotty acting and a collection of varyingly informative moments that might be too cryptic and unconventional for some viewers. Even I'll admit that there were tidbits I don't get after watching the movie a second time for this review, but I feel that the unexplained and unexplainable have a surer place in horror than in any other genre and it'd be nice to get a bunch of fellow Molly viewers in a restaurant booth together so we can hash out theories over big plates of hash browns. At the very least the film convinced me that the filmmakers knew exactly what was going on even if I didn't know, something all films like this must have before filming starts if they want to have any cohesion. If you want something filled with creeping, mysterious dread this Halloween, pop in Lovely Molly by itself or as part 1 of a double feature with the similarly-themed and sorely underrated American remake of Silent House. Or double feature it with our next foray into Eduardo Sánchez's nightmares...
~PNK
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