I have never seen this, but Tom Pratt recommended it.
It stars George C Scott, so that’s a plus. It looks like a family is on a winter vacation to upstate NY, I mean they actually said Upstate NY. Hey….that’s where I live!!! Their car is not working, so they push it on the side of the road. While George is making a call on a conveniently placed payphone, one car is driving in the shitty slush were get so often up here, while a bigger truck like a dump truck is coming the opposite way. The car slides, the truck veers into George’s car where his wife and daughter are. And that’s the beginning.
So in case you don’t know, George is a pretty important actor. He was in Dr. Strangelove, Patton, The Hustler, and for you horror fans, he played John Rainbird in Firestarter, the guy who is actually trying to get info from Drew Barrymore. So yeah, he’s a big deal.
I’m going to be lazy and copy and paste the storyline straight from IMDB so I can give you an idea of what I’m seeing while being able to better focus on this as I have an absolutely ridiculous headache at the moment and just doing keystrokes on this laptop are kinda loud.
“It was the perfect family vacation for composer John Russell and his family when a freak automobile accident claims the lives of his wife and daughter. Consumed by grief, John, at the request of friends, rents an old turn of the century house. Mammoth in size, the house seems all the room that John needs to write music and reflect. He does not realize that he is not alone in the house. He shares it with the spirit of a murdered child who has homed in on John’s despair and uses him to uncover decades of silence and deceit. With the help of Claire Norman, the one who aided John in procuring the house, they race to find the answers and soon learn that a devious and very powerful man guards them.”
I simply couldn’t concentrate with this headache in all fairness, but I got the gist of everything and I don’t feel I missed much, I simply didn’t write about it. This was very atmospheric as most haunted house type films should be. Even better is when the person is alone because it messes with a person’s head that much more. You can’t look over and say “Did you just hear that?” type of nonsense. There are times when he is not alone. Most importantly, when I look on IMDB for similar films, I see Session 9 and Stir of Echoes. But it missed the most obvious movie to compare it to, The Ring. At first, I couldn’t pinpoint it, but the more I watched, I noticed the similarities, and there was even a well scene.
In conclusion, for 1980, this was very good. You have a very strong male lead who carries this. The story is engaging, and like The Ring, clearly somebody did another person wrong and the spirit is trying to guide the person to the answer, also like Stir of Echoes. Hmmmm, I apparently love films like this. I liked this way more than Amityville Horror, I felt more occurred. At first, I feared there would be too much Paranormal Activity, and while you could draw some minor parallels, it’s nothing significant. I really enjoyed this movie and would recommend it if you dig any of the movies that I just mentioned. I am giving this a 6.5 with the idea that this could become a classic upon further viewings.
Final Rating: 6.5
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