YES VIRGINIA, THERE REALLY IS A TENNESSEE... AND THAT'S ALL THERE IS...








The Bell Witch Haunting (2013)

Class, time to pay attention. HEY! Pay attention and you might get by with this review that will take you only a couple of minutes to read and appreciate (or hate, your choice). If you DON'T quiet down, your punishment will be 91 minutes of the inane ripoff of all the PA movies, haunting movies, and possession movies you've ever had the misfortune to see. And this is by the Asylum, so those in the know will appreciate just how excruciating those minutes would be.


I can just see the money grubbers now - desperately trying to eek out another movie in 2013. If you were a fly on the wall you'd probably hear something like this: "Okay people, we've got some year left and some losses to cover so let's come up with some ideas pronto!"

"A paranormal movie!"

"Done to death, I don't think we could get away with another one - you're fired!"

"Wait, wait - what if we throw in a possessed female teenager?"

"What? A possessed female is what ALL PA movies have - get out!"

"I've got family sir, let me try again. A paranormal movie, with a possessed teenage girl, AND a local legend presented as 'real events'."

"That's the worst idea I've ever -"

"AND... and we'll have a bunch of girls in bikinis taking their tops off for no reason whatsoever, a swooshing force that kills people (off camera of course) and an Amityville-type family who, although this all happens to them refuse to move out?"

"That is the... BEST idea I've heard this year. Give yourself a raise!"

Yes folks, that's what this is. A re-re-re-re-re-re-re-telling of the urban legend Tennessee folks either hold dear or just wish would go away - the Bell witch. Now if you read my review on December 30, 2013 of An American Haunting, you already know a bit about how it goes (or doesn't) and you don't want to go through it again. If you didn't read the review... no harm, no foul. And apparently they have their OWN horror movie worksheet - better not step on mine Asylum, it's patent pending.

Short and sour: This is the stupid tale of the Sawyer family who move into one of those huge houses that people in the movies seem to buy as easily as a new phone. We see the mother, father, son and daughter celebrating the son's birthday with a new video camera. Lame overused movie plot point #1 check.

The son soon irritates the whole family by using said camera with the typical 'turn that off' every five minutes or so which of course he doesn't do. Lame overused movie plot point #2 check.

If there is anything about to happen, whether it's slamming doors, booming sounds or whispering, the audience is warned by a rumbling noise that apparently only the audience can hear. Lame overused movie plot point #3 check.

Although horrible things begin to happen from the beginning (such as a couple who attended the birthday party being found dead by the side of the road that same night) the family blithely stays in the house. Lame overused movie plot point #4 check.



The boy, together with his friends find out about the Bell witch and gee whiz, the Sawyer's new home is right smack on the Bell property. Lame overused movie plot point #5 check.

The girl is bothered from the first day from night terrors which continue each night, as her behavior gets more and more bizarre and she starts displaying some evil activity. Lame overused movie plot point #6 check.

After a few more deaths of friends of the family, the father spitting up blood and wandering off in the night, the girl being found in the forest by police munching on roadkill and the mother cutting herself every ten minutes on something exploding on her, they get a priest to 'exorcise' the house - which ends up making things worse. 

See, these guys need to read Acts 11-16 'cause demons aren't going to take crap off of anybody no matter how many times you try to use the Lord's name. So now the teenage girl is totally possessed complete with levitation. She attacks the priest and snaps his neck. Lame overused movie plot point #7 check.


Instead of getting out or having a hundred cops show up, after the daughter takes off, the three remaining family members run out to the woods to find her, so the ending of the movie is all nauseating night shots bobbing all over the place, just to have the brother killed by his sister with his own camera. Lame overused movie plot point #8 check.

The father, bringing a gun, thinks he sees his possessed daughter coming at him and shoots. It's his wife. She's dead. The daughter shows up and stares at him, somehow forcing him to take the gun and blow his own brains out. Lame overused movie plot point #9 check.


The movie ends by claiming that they caught the Sawyer girl who lives in an asylum, screaming every night but leaving plenty of opportunity for a sequel, the mother was never found and the mystery never solved. Aaaaand this means that lame overused movie plot point #10 is a check and WE ARE DONE.

Now we sit and wait and rake in the bucks...

(BTW the WHOLE cast went uncredited. I wonder why...)

Does this LOOK like they're scared of some urban legend?

A DUMB MOVIE I WATCHED SOME TIME AGO BUT DIDN'T REVIEW AND NOW I HAVE TO BECAUSE I ALMOST MIXED IT UP WITH THE HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT DAMMIT!


An American Haunting (2005)

Okay people very quick history lesson here. This is a movie based on, not 'true events', but the telling of a story that was from a story that was told in a story that was found in a paragraph in an old book that someone found and went oooh, easy novel material and wrote yet another book claiming it to be true. Pffft. The Bell Witch or Bell Witch Haunting is a poltergeist legend from Southern folklore, centered on the 19th century fictional Bell family in Tennessee. Okay, partially fictional. There was a family named Bell and they were in Tennessee. Capicé? 

Just think of it as an early version of The Enquirer

No Andrew Jackson did not meet the witch and get scared off by it, no it did not torture a family in the 1800's, no it was NEVER a true story, it was ALWAYS a novel or an article written by someone out to make money, not history.

So. (My husband hates one word sentences so I use them a lot) So. This movie tanked. Since it was a fake story that's no great loss, but the waste of talent in Sissy Spacek and Donald Sutherland is almost a crime. It can claim to be 'the only case in the US where a spirit caused the death of a man' all it wants, that doesn't make it so you MORONS. That was directed at the movie makers, not you guys of course.

The truth as far as you can find it being he was a nothing kind of man in the 19th century, John Bell contracted a disease that he had for three years before his death. The claim that a 'spirit' caused the disease is like saying 'my mama is sick 'cause she was mean to me so God is killing her'. It's gross, it's wrong, and it's just plain stupid. 

Besides, it is stated with several sources (including this dumb movie I might add) that the cause of his death (as the illness was not considered fatal in itself) was poisoning at the hand of his daughter. How, then does one conclude that a 'spirit' killed him? Massive duh and I'm getting a wicked headache.

November 1848. Kids are playing soccer. Critics say that's anachronistic and as horrid as the film is, that's not entirely true. The idea of kicking around a ball has been in place since the 2nd and 3rd centuries BC. In China, it was during the Han dynasty that people dribbled leather balls by kicking it into a small net. It made its way to England so it is not a big stretch to find it in colonial America. Why did I put that in? 'Cause this movie has nothing to say and I have almost nothing to put here.

The bottom line to this sorry mess of a movie is the subject of incest. The dumbass (and so lacking in anything original YOU could tell me the movie plot and you'd mostly be right) effects are the same, the progression, same, the fact that no one ever pays attention to their kids 'cause they're wrapped up in themselves and their own miseries until it's too late, same. Same same same same same.

Present: A divorced woman and her daughter live together. The daughter has bad dreams of being chased. She has to spend the weekend with her father and really doesn't want to. The mother doesn't care. In her daughter's room she finds stuff from the attic and chastises her daughter for being up there. She takes the stuff and the story begins as she opens a letter and reads and somehow one letter becomes a 93 minute movie.

Past: Again, 19th century. This must have been the CLEANEST place in the new world 'cause every scene looked like the actors picked up their bleached and starched and ironed outfits without a speck of dirt anywhere, the homes looked better than any I've ever lived in, and everything was one lightbulb away from being ripped out of Better Homes and Gardens.

Betsy Bell is having fits. She's not spoiled, she's actually having fits. To make this movie more dramatic we've got the smashed windows, voices, Betsy levitating, you know, everything you probably already have seen in another film. No wonder I get these 'The Haunting Of' movies confused. What's happening to her is obvious to everyone except her mother - no strike that. Her mother knows perfectly well what's going on but has chosen to ignore/forget it. Betsy is being 'visited' during the night by her father. Duh.


They ask a, umm, I don't know who the hell he was supposed to be but he had a Bible. He attempts to - you know. It fails. They then for whatever reason (probably to advance the plot since he's the writer of the letter) call the schoolmaster over to discover what the hell is going on. During all of this the father chooses to blame a neighbor he had a property dispute with. Never once does he confess his sin against his daughter. Figures. Since he doesn't the torture continues until Betsy poisons him with her mother looking on (in the movie, I have no idea what happened in real life). All the spooky stuff stops and Betsy marries the schoolmaster. He makes the remark that he hopes this never happens again. <snort>

Riiiight. And the small Washington town I used to
live in has a Bigfoot festival every year. Cause
everything you hear/read is true.

Skip to present day. Mother has conveniently just finished the story when her daughter comes in and announces her father is there and she's leaving. She watches them drive away, her daughter looking upset and worried (DUUUUUH). Going back into the house she's confronted by the 'ghost' of Betsy (also conveniently still looking like she did in the movie) who tells her to 'Help her'. She gets a clue way too late and runs back outside, trying to stop her ex from taking off with his apparently already-being-abused-daughter. And the credits run. And now I can put down the whiskey bottle.

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