After do the genre - changing Blair Witch Project for a tiny budget , film maker Eduardo Sánchez spend over a tenner recover . He worked on a string of unsuccessful film , but now he ’s trying for a counter with his first feature in a while , Lovely Molly . Like Blair , this indie horror flick contain find footage into a nervus - jangling story of a station haunted by nestling straining , poverty , and maybe even [ insert your favorite snakey , slurpy Ancient Evil Mythos here ] .
It ’s undeniable that Sánchez ’ worrying , evocative found footage style in Blair commute revulsion filmmaking forever . Without it , there would have been no Paranormal Activity , no Cloverfield , and no The Last Exorcism . Despite the rising tide of high-risk found footage flicks and ARG campaigns that Sánchez unleashed by inspiration , he also unfold the threshold for a new variety of documentary realism in horror that infused the genre with fresh life . What many draw a blank is that his movie was also notable for its use of sound and abstract symbol to enkindle fear that the Saw serial publication could only dream of . While other filmmakers were trying to shock us by bathe our face in sand and orb , Sánchez has permanently colonise our nightmares with those insanely terrifying scene render nothing but bundle of reefer and rags .
you’re able to see a batch of Sánchez ’ distinctive style in Lovely Molly , but here the shade haunting our characters is n’t some upstage legend . He ’s the father of Molly , our protagonist , a do work course newlywed struggling with aloneness ( her married man Tim is a truck driver and often out ) and tear aside by her past as an abused kid and diacetylmorphine addict . She and Tim ca n’t quite make ends meet , so they move into Molly ’s empty childhood home . At first we only get hints of how disturbed Molly is — she seems felicitous at her job as a department store clerk , and find footage flashbacks to her wedding let out a big grouping of home and friends who love her . But she ’s still obsessed with her parents ’ deaths , and she begins to learn weird noises in the house when Tim is away .
As the moving picture move on , Molly descends into what is either hellish possession by her evil , abusive sire ’s ghost , or a drug - craze volute into homicidal freakout mode . There ’s something frankly tedious about the “ is it all in her mind ” plot line , which succeeds only in rarified instances like Pan ’s Labyrinth . In Lovely Molly , it seems like an self-justification for Sánchez not to take responsibility for what he ’s doing to Molly ’s character . There does n’t need to be verse or reason to what she ’s doing because hey — she ’s crazy ! or possessed ! whatever !
Most of the film is a frustrating jam of aspect that are terse , vivid distillate of pure horror and scenes that are the boggy kind of random sexual victimisation I ’ve see in a while . As Molly ’s visions of her begetter intensify , she originate trying to charm his ghostwriter on television camera — presumably to prove to herself or other people that he exists , but we never really experience . In one intensely chilling sequence , we get a first - person videocamera position as she come into an ancient cellar in the house , buzz sweet , finally reaching a creepy goat / snake bas relief carve into the bulwark before we pick up gibbering , slurp noises . It ’s a delicious moment of what - the - fuckery . There is also an incredibly disturbing succession where Molly is waylaid by the ghost in a dark service of process entrance at body of work . When we later see what happened in protection footage , it ’s a really wild deterrent example psychological revulsion .
But a lot of the moving picture is just given over to clichéd representations of Molly going crazy by getting really ruttish , or smoking a draw , or not doing her make-up . We ’re supposed to have sex she ’s in a bad position because she wants to have sexual activity all the sentence and keeps wandering around naked . As these lust view slow transform to blood lust splurge , it feel like you ’re watching every Satanic ownership movie ever made . For some grounds , Sánchez ca n’t bring his startling originality to Molly ’s descent into craziness / immorality . The film lento make to a climax you run into follow from a mile off , and no amount of gratis sexual activity and violence can write you from ennui .
Lovely Molly is a mixed bag . It will by all odds gross out you out in places , but it remains a mostly unsatisfying taradiddle with a lot of hope and no follow - through . Tragically , it finger like a forged ripoff of discover footage movies like Paranormal Activity — motion picture that Sánchez once inspired , and is now exploiting for warmed - over ideas .
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