 | 映画原題: An American Haunting [ 映画邦題: アメリカン・ホーンティング] : 話題注目作劇場公開映画 |  | |  |  | |  | An American Haunting : Hollywood Cinema Director : シネマ作品監督紹介 | | An American Haunting : Actor [CAST・CREW] : アクター・アクトレス(男優・女優・声優)&ミュージシャン・アーティスト紹介 | | An American Haunting : 本国映画ライターによる映画の内容 with イングリッシュ : English Description of Story |  |  |  |  | Amazon.com:With its brisk 83-minute running time, An American Haunting is compact enough to be recommended as an occasionally spooky sampling of historical horror. Based on Brent Monahan's novel The Bell Witch: An American Haunting, which in turn was inspired by the only known case (from 1818-20) in which the U.S. government officially acknowledged a death by supernatural forces, writer-director Courtney Solomon's film is a well-crafted 19th-century case study involving Tennessee land-owner John Bell (Donald Sutherland), his worried wife Lucy (Sissy Spacek), and the terrifying abuse of their daughter Betsy (Rachel Hurd-Wood) by a malicious poltergeist. Intensified by excessive sound effects and a nerve-jangling score, these nightly hauntings won't scare anyone who's seen The Exorcist, and they grow increasingly repetitious even as Spacek and Sutherland make the most of their underwritten roles. Solomon (who previously brought Dungeons and Dragons to the big screen) seems more interested in visceral terror than fleshing out the details of this interesting story of dark secrets and child abuse, and his over-used bag of tricks includes time-lapse footage, flashes of negative images, black-and-white (to signal an imminent haunting), and a variety of physical effects designed to keep your adrenaline flowing. It works, to a point (although the present-day framing scenes are completely unnecessary), and An American Haunting makes a good double-feature with The Exorcism of Emily Rose, a far better film with similar subject matter. This good-looking, bleakly moody fright-fest is also noteworthy as the next-to-last screen credit for Adrian Biddle, the esteemed cinematographer of such high-profile hits as Aliens, Thelma & Louise, The Mummy, and V for Vendetta, the latter completed just prior to Biddle's fatal heart attack in December 2005.--Jeff Shannon |  |  |  |  | | | | | An American Haunting : 現地ハリウッド市民の評価 : 英語批評版 : Native Evaluation | | | | |  FUN MOVIE TO WATCH ON A RAINY NIGHT!! / 2006-06-15
I can't wait for it to be released on DVD. Ok, so it wasn't factual, but it was nonetheless entertaining. And it is CLEAN!! No profanity or obscene sex scenes!!!! That merits five stars alone these days. This is NOT a "scary" flick so to speak but more about the understanding of the real presence of evil that still exists in our midst. I found the whole movie quite fun to watch. It is packed with suspense and moves at a brisk pace. Let's not forget the distinguished cast led by Academy Award Winner and six time nominee Sissy Spacek. She is incomparable as Lucy Bell, the mother in the story. Spacek alone makes the film worth watching. No less superb is Donald Sutherland as her poor, bewitched husband. The girl who plays the daughter (I'm sorry I forgot her name) is also incredible. I don't understand why this movie is getting such a bad rap. I found it extremely entertaining and best of all I didn't hear the "F" word once! Bravo!! | | | | | | | | | | | |  BETTER THAN WHAT PEOPLE SAY / 2006-06-02
An American Haunting, which is more suspense than horror grabs your attention at the begining, but if you don't pay attention. It does seem to throw you off. I paid attention and understood everything. Its jumpy,suspensful parts were what made the movie creepy. If you liked The Exrosisim Of Emily Rose. There is a good chance that you might like this movie.
It is about a family who was living a happy life. But the father did something wrong. It had something to do with not paying this lady money. SHe tells the father(Donald Sutherland). I will curse you and your family forever. Mostly your daughter. Then strage events occur on the daughter, only because one of the family members is holding a terrible secret.
I liked it and recommend it to anyone who loves horror movies as much as I do. Go see it. But, PAY ATTENTION!!!
Check out all my other reveiws!!!!! :-] | | | | | | | | | | | |  Where were the train tracks? / 2006-05-25
To learn more about the Bell witch, I went to see this production on my birthday, thinking it was based on truth. Perhaps there was a kernel of truth in the premise, but the 'Omen' type characters and action were not what would have happened in the 1800's smalltown Tennessee in the rural regions.
The sainted old man (Bell) ridiculed publicly the woman he stole from and refused to take blame for his criminal actions. He was asking for trouble. Hell and damnation fell on his household, but it wasn't caused by a mere human. The devil took his toll for the callousness of a warped fallen "angel." The church hierarchy recommended redemption for his sins, which he refused to admit. After all, duping an old single woman and taking her respect away is no sin -- in his religious eyes. He got his reward!
At the college in Pulaski, the dean told us stories of some of the past at his hometown, Adams, Tennessee. When we'd have a Halloween gathering in the gym (couldn't call it a "party" like I tried to do on my weekly radio broadcast, "News from the Martin Campus," as were were Methodists in a small town and had to set an example of Christian integrity), he'd regale the group with scary episodes about this Bell witch. On another occasion, he returned from his University position in Kansas to speak again on that subject, for a special event. The thing which stuck in my memory was that she could be seen carrying a lantern on dark nights walking up the railroad tracks. Now, that is scary. Some folks claim they really saw her ghost "on the tracks" some Halloween nights around midnight.
Donald Sutherland, acting as John Bell, was just a reprise of his role in 'The Last Living Confederate Widow.' Had this been filmed in the area of Adams, Tennessee, instead of some weird foreign place, it might have been believable. The dean's son appeared in the most recent Hallmark production of James Agee's book filmed in Middle Tennessee and was panned simply because it was not a local performance. In the 60s, there was a movie made here about the book, and David Alford (from Adams, Tennessee) could not be blamed for the location which had been in Franklin.
This American "haunting" was pure Hollywood -- not much actual facts involved, and so I came away perplexed at the "things" I saw on the screen. It did not spoil my birthday, however. There simply wasn't anything "to learn" about this ghost and her vengeance on a man who had humiliated her in public and his family. It was a disappointment if you want history. It's just another of those bad scary movies. | | | | | | | | | | | | An Intelligent and Thoughful Drama / 2006-05-22
An American Haunting is based on the true story of the "Bell Witch" haunting, the only time in recorded US history of a poltergeist committing murder. The film that results is one of the many plausible explanations of those events. In the movie John Bell (played by Donald Sutherland) upsets a fellow church member by charging her too much interest on his land. The woman is rumored to be a witch and before they part she warns that great evil will befall him and his precious daughter Betsy (Rachel Hurd-Wood). A few nights later the Bell's hear scratching on the roof, and a great black wolf attacks Mr. Bell and the spirit begins to beat young Betsy Ann and pull her hair. John and his wife Lucy (Sissy Spacek) can only watch helplessly as their daughter is tormented by the evil spirit. But things aren't what they seem and by flashbacks to 1800's Tennesee the truth is exposed and the real criminal is revealed. This is an amazing movie, though not always understood by some, especially those who go hoping to see a pointless "Stay Alive" horror movie. An American Haunting is a drama, with real depth, meaning, and human emotion. | | | | | | | | | | | |  Worst movie I've seen on the big screen in years-- even worse than Solaris. / 2006-05-18
An American Haunting (Courtney Solomon, 2006)
The first thing that needs said about this movie: someone shoot Caine Davidson before he is allowed to destroy any other movies. It is possible to make an argument that the awful, awful score of this movie-- the worst I've heard outside John Williams-- turned it from a piece of utterly mediocre filmmaking into something that was positively painful to sit through. I'm not sure how good an argument it is, but it's an argument.
In order to make it, you have to buy that An American Haunting has any redeeming qualities. Okay, first off: it's a PG-13 horror film, something that no one has successfully pulled off since the introduction of the PG-13 rating. Second, you've got the script. Whether or not the script was any good mostly depends on how you feel about the actors involved, but there were some moments where a flash of dialogue, a word or a phrase, made me wonder if anyone had checked it for period authenticity; they were too modern to have been in common use at the time. And, of course, like most period pieces, it's overacted. (Why directors insist on actors in period pieces overacting is beyond me. I still wince watching John Malkovich chew scenery in Dangerous Liaisons.)
Then there are the actors. Rachel Hurd-Wood is pretty easy on the eyes, but everyone involved with this production had to know that Hurd-Wood's performance would get compared to Jennifer Carpenter's in The Exorcism of Emily Rose; Hurd-Wood is Naomi Watts in The Ring compared to Carpenter's Naomi Watts in 21 Grams. There's simply no comparison between the two, and Hurd-Wood comes up short every time. Then there are Donald Sutherland and Sissy Spacek. Spacek's career was on the rocks for quite a few years, and it's understandable to see her taking roles like this and The Ring Two. Sutherland's presence here, on the other hand, is as baffling as can be. There are a few times in this film when he attempts to emote; all of them are somewhat painful. Not because he's acting effectively, quite the opposite. I can't tell whether he's amused at the script or simply embarrassed to be involved. Either way, the interplay between script and actors, especially Sutherland, provides a number of moments of unintentional hilarity.
And if the thing is overacted, that's nothing compared to how it was handled behind the camera. Everything about this movie is over-something. The soundtrack, both with its hideous musical score and its consistent overblowing of sound effects and ambient sound both, is a travesty, and easily the worst thing about the film, despite the many other horrible things about it. And Solomon (who also directed Dungeons and Dragons; this should tell you all you need to know) is the kind of director who finds a special effect he likes and overuses it to ludicrous effect; I was actually pleasantly surprised that the nausea-inducing ghost's-eye-view was only used a few times (and only twice rushing down at the earth).
But what really makes this from the amusing piece of trash Dungeons and Dragons was into the morally offensive pit of failure this movie is is the frame story. It's bad enough that the trailers seemed to suggest the movie took place equally in both times, but that might have at least been defensible; as it stands, it reeks of "let's take an old story based on real human beings, twist it to our own ends, and then use it to come up with social-consciousness schlock in the final two minutes that would barely play on the Lifetime Movie Network!" I'd be surprised, and I will be disappointed, if what living relatives John Bell has don't sue Courtney Solomon for every penny he has.
I haven't seen a more offensive movie since The Day After Tomorrow; that one, however, at least had Jake Gyllenhaal to mitigate some of the utter disgust I felt watching it. This has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. It is shameless, stupid, badly put together, manipulative, and possibly libelous. If you have a choice between spending eight dollars on this movie and eight dollars on sharp sticks with which to poke yourself in the eye, I cannot recommend highly enough that you spring for the sharp sticks. (zero) | | | | | | | | 
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[PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)]
1818～20年にかけて、テネシー州のベル家に起きた実話に基づく映画。アメリカでは、霊が原因で人が死亡したとして記録されているのは現在に至るまで "the Bell Witch Haunting" として知られるこの事例だけという。ベル家の霊体験の最初の兆候は、農場付近で奇妙な音を聞いたり、黄色い目を持つ謎めいた狼の徘徊を目撃したりするだけにとどまっていたが、次第に家の人々、特に末娘に霊が接触してくるようになる。
