Lovely Molly Movie Review

Eerie and atmospheric, this is yet another pointless point-of-view ghost thriller, like The Blair Witch Project (which was co-written and co-directed by Sanchez). There are some intriguing ideas here, but the script never makes anything interesting of them.

After their wedding, Molly and Tim (Lodge and Lewis) move into her creaky old family home. Her parents have died in a car crash, and Molly is clearly still unnerved, hearing loud noises in the basement and having bizarre dreams.

Combined with Tim being away for work, this strains their young marriage.

Molly's sister Hannah (Holden) tries to help when Tim's gone, but Molly's internal obsession is getting worse. And when she's alone, something seems to possess her, urging her to do increasingly horrific things.

Sanchez tells the story alternating between Molly's home-video diaries and shadowy scenes as she around the unnaturally dark house turning on lights to little effect and being freaked out by sudden weirdness. In her video recordings we also see odd things such as a Satanic-looking underground cellar and her voyeuristic spying on the neighbours. There's also what looks to be an evil green leather armchair, as well as a stash of drug paraphernalia that hits Molly in an area of weakness.

The vague, meandering narrative feels contrived, playing on demonic movie cliches without giving us anything to latch onto. There are several shuddery moments, but since we're allowed so little connection to Molly, it's more moody than scary. Lodge effectively portrays Molly's own terror, so the film feels less like a horror movie than an exploration of a young woman falling back into drug addiction and mental illness.

That said, the script and direction continually undermine this kind of sophisticated theme, mainly because Tim and Hannah can also hear the noises and smell the stench. Lewis and Holden play frightened convincingly, but we never understand why one of them doesn't just have her locked up for her own good. in other words, this is clearly just another murky, under-explained Blair Witch-style exploration of ghosts, possession and paranormal activity. But then it's made for audiences for whom eerie atmospherics and a few hideously unnerving jolts are enough.