An American Haunting

Based on true events, An America Haunting is a scary movie of sorts, in that the events chronicled here - an early 19th Century family driven to the brink of insanity by a vengeful spirit - must have been terrifying for those involved.

Alas, for cinema audiences, Courtney Solomon's film fails to chill right from the opening sequence, in which a young girl runs into her house, supposedly chased by some horrifying invisible force.

When the truth about the spirit's nature and origin (hinted at very loudly by Solomon's screenplay) is finally revealed, it's a massive anti-climax.

Donald Sutherland and Sissy Spacek trade anguished wide-eyed stares as things go bump in the night, while Rachel Hurd-Wood faces the humiliation of being battered and bruised by her spectral attacker.

Solomon fails to generate tension and alternates between various points of view, including hallucinogenic sequences from the perspective of the spirit, swooping around the old farmhouse like an inebriated pigeon.

An American Haunting descends into (presumably unintentional) moments of comic genius, like when the Bells hear crashes and Lucy asks, completely seriously, if squirrels might have nested in the attic.

Spacek and Sutherland elevate the hocus pocus material to the realms of watchable. But if Scooby-Doo and the Mystery, Inc gang had appeared from the dark woods to solve the case, to cries of "those pesky kids" from one of the locals, the film might have been more plausible - and more entertaining.