Theological Nonsense Invades the Screen with The Haunting of Molly Hartley

Warning: Spoilers follow

The Haunting of Molly Hartley is one of the most inept and idiotic scary movies I've seen since An American Haunting. Calling this film a horror movie is like calling Schindler's List a comedy. The only thing to be frightened about is the thought of actually having to sit through this train wreck. This is undoubtedly one of the worst films of the year.

Here's the main problem with this movie. It feels like it should be playing on the CW at the teenybopper time slot between moronic shows like Gossip Girl and One Tree Hill. It has all the ridiculous drama you would expect from those programs including an "Oh no she didn't" catfight.

Slapping this should-have-been-direct-to-DVD film on that channel would actually be quite fitting since it shamelessly rips off the premise of the CW's Reaper. That show is about a dude whose soul is the devil's on his 21st birthday. This film is about a chick whose soul is the devil's on her 18th birthday. Totally different.

By telling you about her connection with the devil, I've pretty much ruined the movie for you since that's supposed to be a big reveal late in the story, but if you have any sense, you'll figure it out yourself very quickly. It's so plainly evident that I figured it out not even 15 minutes into the film.

So the whole time, I sat there and waited for the climax hoping that something would happen along the way. Unfortunately, the film has one of the most unsatisfying climaxes I've ever seen in any horror movie. The movie builds (read: does nothing) for an hour and 20 minutes and it doesn't even give us the satisfaction of a final showdown. Molly ends up in a room on the eve of her 18th birthday, the clock hits midnight, people talk, movie over. There's some inane twist shortly after, but it does nothing to make a remarkably bad movie any better.

The Haunting of Molly Hartley was a chore to watch. It's only about an hour and 26 minutes, but it feels at least double that. Anybody over the age of 14 that can sit through this garbage deserves some kind of medal. Unless you want to see one giant long cliché scare tactic (a flock of birds loudly flying by, a hand coming out of nowhere, a dead person coming alive for one final shock, etc.), I'd skip this one. The performances were actually pretty decent, but when the rest of the package is so dismal, what's it matter? I thought I had safely secured my top three worst films of the year; that is until I saw this nonsense. The Haunting of Molly Hartley is a complete disaster from start to finish.

The Haunting of Molly Hartley receives 0.5/5