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Movie Review: “The Haunting Of Alice D” Is Excruciatingly Bad

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In the late 1890s the Davenport House was a famous and successful brothel, until a young prostitute named Alice killed herself there. More than a century later, the old structure is renovated into a beautiful mansion. It is rumored to inhabit the ghost of Alice but despite this, the new owner, the rich and arrogant heir to the Davenport fortune, decides to throw a wild party for his first night in the house.

Independent horror films. Over the years, we have had some true gems; “It Follows,” “Paranormal Activity,” “The Blair Witch Project,” and of course, “Halloween.” On the other hand, there have been some truly dreadful ones; “Zombie Strippers,” “Alone in the Dark,” “Book Of Shadows: Blair Witch 2,” and “Birdemic.” Now you can add “The Haunting of Alice D” to the latter. I am all for indie films as I am an indie filmmaker myself for the past 30 years so I love to watch other filmmakers’ visual presentations. When they are good, I will praise them to the heavens and do everything I can to help spread the word. But when they are bad, the one thing I never set out to do, is tear it apart and lambaste the filmmakers. That’s too easy and God knows, I’ve made films that weren’t too-well received and you learn from the experience and set out to do better with your next project but lo and behold, I am also a film critic and that is what this site is all about.

In 1898, Davenport House is a thriving brothel. When its owner buys Alice (Kristina Page), the younger of two sisters, after their parents have passed away, and then separates them, Alice eventually kills herself and her story passes into folklore. In present day, Joe (Juan Riedinger), the heir to the Davenport estate, is getting ready to move into the mansion after having been renovated and he invites his best friends and some call girls over to have an initiation party but things quickly go south. As the group split up, exploring the supposed haunted mansion as they go, one by one, they meet their grisly demise.

While most horror films don’t spend too much time concentrating on the plotline, after all, the fans just want to see blood and guts or scary things that go bump in the night, here, the story that we are introduced to in the beginning of the movie, is actually pretty good. It’s when the film moves to the present day setting that it loses any impact it might have had otherwise. There is nothing scary about a newly-renovated mansion, it is clean, and new, and brightly lit, not exactly the kind of locale one would expect in a scary movie, the filmmakers would probably have been better off shooting it in the desert, during the day, with clear blue skies in the background because it would have had the exact same effect.

Roger Corman once said, “Never show your monster in the daylight.” That is pretty self-explanatory, and that’s why the majority of scary movies take place in old houses in disarray, at nighttime, in the basement. We know the girl onscreen shouldn’t go into the basement alone but if she doesn’t, the film would end. In “The Haunting of Alice D,” Joe and his friends are presented to the audience as very unlikable characters, who think of women only as sexual objects yet when scary things start happening to them, we’re supposed to care about them. We don’t. I actually started rooting for the ghosts but in any kind of horror movie, you need some sort of narrative exposition, something that goes beyond the high-strung, sexed-up, stereotypical characters we have all come to expect in films of this nature. We are introduced to two characters early on in the story, they find a room where they can be alone, start making out and then something apparently attacks them and they’re never seen again. And what’s more, nobody else in the house ever mentions them. And these guys are supposed to be best friends.

The characters herein are cardboard cutouts who serve no other function than to help propel the story forward. Several times, I actually caught the shadow of the camera operator as the camera passed in front of the character onscreen and that pretty much took me out of the entire picture. These are technical mistakes that should never be talked about in a movie review but here we are. We get long, long, loooooong takes of actors just talking and when they leave the scene, a door handle turns, or a bed sheet moves and then we cut away. There is absolutely no tension whatsoever and the film employs the clichéd gimmick where a character appears normal and in a split second, they become possessed and their jaw elongates, accompanied by a horrendous, demonic shriek, just like the image in the trailer below and this is designed to scare us but anybody who knows anything about scary movies, can see it coming a mile away.

I always give the filmmakers top marks for actually getting out there and getting their film made, good or bad, because it is such a huge undertaking but in the overall scope of things, while “The Haunting of Alice D” utilizes a terrific location, unfortunately, it and the rest of the movie, is utterly forgettable.

Available on DVD and Digital Video May 3rd

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kp6VVhZ7Eu0
 
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James McDonald

Originally from Dublin, Ireland, James is a Movie Critic with 40 years of experience in the film industry as an Award-Winning Filmmaker. He is also a member of the Critics Choice Association and the Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association.