Alongside co-director Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sanchez gave the world The Blair Witch Project in 1998. Although it wasn’t the first found footage movie (that dubious honour belongs to Cannibal Holocaust and others) it was the one that introduced the gimmick to the mainstream by making an obscene profit at the box office and it’s the reason that even 14-years-later we’re still being subjected to an endless deluge of cheap, ugly films shot on handheld cameras that seem to think filming from a first person perspective is an excuse for not having an interesting story or any innovative filmmaking ideas.
So Sanchez has a lot to answer for. And with Lovely Molly he doesn’t come close to making amends. It begins with footage of the eponymous Molly (Gretchen Lodge) talking directly to the camera, explaining that she’s sorry for reasons we don’t yet know, before cutting to highlights of her wedding video as she marries Tim (the late Johnny Lewis). At this point, if you’re anything like me, your heart will sink as it appears we’re in for another found footage fiasco. But no! Once this footage ends we’re then treated to what appears to be some actual filmmaking with actors on sets being filmed by multiple cameras and cinematography and everything! There’s probably even a script!
This joy is short-lived though as it soon becomes clear that Sanchez’s idea of what constitutes scary hasn’t changed since Blair Witch. It still involves nothing happening to people you don’t care about. The story centres on the newlyweds moving into Molly’s old family home where her father recently died. She’s an ex drug addict who is tempted to turn back to her old ways and when vaguely sinister things start happening in the house we’re left to wonder if these are paranormal happenings or just Molly’s mind starting to crack. We’re also left to wonder why we’re supposed to care.
Sanchez seems to be aiming to create a creeping sense of dread but only succeeds in creating a continuing state of boredom. Literally nothing happens for huge chunks of time and then a mildly startling event will take place a door will rattle, the couple will hear voices coming from downstairs, the burglar alarm will set itself off. And then nothing will happen again, for what seems like hours. Lovely Molly is only 100 minutes long but it drags by at such a soul-sapping slow pace that it’s a gruelling slog to get through. As it nears the end things do start happening and the pace picks up, but by then you’ll probably just be happy it’s stopping.
It doesn’t help that it’s shot in such a mundane way, with blandly flat digital photography. There’s a school of thought when it comes to horror movies and horror in general that says it’s much easier to scare people with stories set in familiar surroundings, rather than gothic castles or haunted mansions. Lovely Molly goes some way to disproving that theory because it’s set almost entirely in an innocuous suburban house and it wouldn’t scare a four year old. The film really isn’t done any favours by the fact that it’s preceded on the DVD by a trailer for Ti West’s The Innkeepers, which is an example of a smart and effective slow-burning indie horror movie that manages to create an unsettling atmosphere. Basically it succeeds in every way that Lovely Molly fails.
Overall Verdict: An excruciatingly tedious experience that is more likely to bore you to death than scare you. Although once you’ve seen it the prospect of having to sit through it again is quite terrifying.
Special Features:
Making of featurettes
Reviewer: Adam Pidgeon