Have you heard of Lovely Molly?
No, you’re not going to get any horror movie cinephile elitism from me
if you haven’t, because I didn’t either until a few nights ago while sitting
alone watching television when a DVD trailer happened across the screen.
The movie hasn’t made much of an impact. It started its rounds in the film festival
circuit last September and floundered for a theatrical release for several
months before Image Entertainment confirmed its limited release for May 18. No question why I’d never heard of it. The film had a tiny advertising budget which,
I assume, was mainly spent on six teaser films (I’ll talk about those later),
and I haven’t stepped foot in a movie theater in months, opting instead for a
local two-screen drive-in. So, if it’s
not there and it’s not on the television or being thrown at me from the
internet, I probably won’t see it. If
you’re much like me, you won’t see it either.
But, just for fun, go check it out.
Now that you’ve googled it, let me start with the Eduardo Sanchez
thing. Sanchez is one of the co-directors
of The Blair Witch Project. I’d like to say he’s
the one that matters, but I don’t think either of them do, and I can’t remember
the other guy’s name, so I won’t discuss their differences. If you’ve ever talked to me for any period
of time, you know I have an unfailing and prideful love for The Blair
Witch Project. There are a few reasons around
this, ranging from the film’s brilliant advertising campaign to the fact that
this group of resourceful young people produced one of the greatest hoaxes in
American history. Yeah, you’re reading
this thinking, man, Blair Witch Project sucked, and I’m certain that you’re thinking
that for two reasons:
- You’ve never really seen it, but judging it
according to the worldwide disdain for the film, or;
- You’re still butthurt that you were fooled, just
like the rest of the country.
But the biggest reason I still love the movie to this day is that it’s
the vehicle that introduced me to the Found Footage mode of filmmaking. In fact, I’ve seen countless news sources and
print media citing Sanchez and The Blair Witch Project as the creator of this
format. The truth is, it stretches as
far back as 1980 with the widely banned Cannibal Holocaust, which many viewers had
originally conceived to be actual footage.
The format has sense been adapted for numerous pictures, from the
Spanish zombie flick [REC] and its American counterpart, Quarantine, Paranormal
Activity, and my personal favorite, Cloverfield. Hell, the format existed in literature long
before the advent of the motion picture – Bram Stoker’s Dracula being a key
entry – but that’s a different story.
 |
| "Having trouble finding a usable image from The Blair Witch Project? Me too." |
And people like to complain about this format being overused and
overplayed now, but take a second to count how many mainstream horror movies
hit the theaters. Now, how many of those
use the found footage style? Don’t ask
me, I already know it’s a lower percent than horror movies with bare tits. I don’t know why people are so fed up with
this format, other than the modern consumer of American cinema wanting the
narrative to be spoon-fed to them with as little resistance as possible. I do know, though, why the format works so
well for horror and not so much for anything else.
That reason is psychological.
Seeing these films told from the first person has two startling effects
on the entertaining viewer. The first
and most obvious is that it puts the audience in the front seat. In these films, you are no longer watching
the events from afar, tucked safe under a fluffy blanket in your mom’s
basement, chewing on stale bubblegum. In
these pictures, you’re thrown into the action, becoming a forced
participant. You are now seeing the
images in the first hand, as they unfold.
When everyone’s dead and there’s no one left to reset the camera, then
dead, too, are your chances of ever escaping.
[REC] and its American remake Quarantine are a shining example of this, as
we watch the events from beginning to end, nearly uncut. The fear is palpable, the struggle for
survival and the realization of unquestionable doom so thick that it weighs you
down.
The second reason the format works well for horror movies, and
logically the more compelling of the two, is because it draws the attention
away from the cause or the scenario and instead forces the focus onto the human
victims. This is never more apparent
than 2008’s Cloverfield. If Cloverfield
had been shot in a standard format, it would have been easily dismissed as just
another Godzilla clone. Instead, the
format kept the action with the drama of the daring young cast as they fought
for survival. By limiting the view of
the monster to strictly what the characters on screen see, we are able to
embody their curiosity, their fear, and their panic. The beauty of the film is we don’t know any
more about what’s happening than they do.
Cloverfield audiences were outraged by the film’s presentation because
they walked in expecting a monster-filled extravaganza and were given, instead,
and emotional and turbulent story that was entirely human.
 |
| "Found footage? Let's give it another go. Hair o' the dog, they say." |
This next part will take it all back to The Blair Witch Project. From a creators’ standpoint, the found
footage format is an intriguing concept because it allows for greater
suspension of disbelief. Bram Stoker
wrote Dracula in the form of collected articles to lend it credibility and to,
in a way, recreate the tradition or oral story telling. These events are easier to swallow when we
allow ourselves to believe we’re watching actual events rather than a
collection of orchestrated and edited sound and video.
The same goes for The Blair Witch Project.
And for the most part, this creative deception worked – from websites
advertising the search for the missing trio of student filmmakers, to hoards of
street teamers hanging fliers around their towns, to television documentaries
in the months leading up to the film’s release, the creative minds behind its
creation wanted us to believe those tapes were real. Eduardo Sanchez will be paying for his
tremendous success until the day he dies as he tries to become anything other
than “That Guy Who Made The Blair Witch Project.”
Well, when he starts making movies worth a damn, maybe he’ll have a
better shot. He was the head behind the
reflective ornaments Altered and Seventh Moon, and the word on the street is he’s
now working on a film called Exists, which – no shit – is about a group of
Texan teenagers being stalked by none other than Bigfoot himself (I actually
hope, for Sanchez’s sake, that there was an error in translation somewhere on
that one and I’ve got my facts horribly wrong).
But when I saw the trailer for Lovely Molly, I’d thought for a moment
that maybe, just maybe, this would be the movie where he got his legs back.
Sadly, I was wrong.
Lovely Molly is the story of the young, all-American newlywed couple,
the titular Molly, and her husband, Timmy.
Like so many other young American couples, the two find themselves in
financial strain, and, to save money, they move into Molly’s childhood home,
which has stood abandoned since the death of her father when she was just a
child. Everything goes alright until she
opens a closet and offers her hand to – well, we don’t know. This is the beginning of Sanchez’s deception.
The scene opens with the same kind of pleading confession as The Blair
Witch Project. As I settled down with a pair of gasping
pugs to watch the movie, I thought, this again, okay. I’d hate to see Sanchez get typecast, but if
it meant he’d be making quality movies, it might be worth it. Moments later, the camera format shifts to a
more standard presentation. This is
always tricky. It’s never a good idea to
bounce between the first-person and the third person with no excuse, seemingly
at random (I’m talking to you, District 9), but I decided to give Lovely Molly
a chance.
I’m glad I didn’t overlook it for that reason, because Sanchez actually
utilized the found footage format in a smart and rather unique way. During key sequences interlaced throughout
the overall narrative, Molly begins taking evening treks into the woods behind
her house. Her motives aren’t
immediately apparent, but instead of filming it from her perspective ala 1978’s
Halloween, Sanchez opts to instead use the footage from the video camera she
carries on her nightly stalking adventures.
Now that this potential meltdown is diverted, let’s move on to the mess
surrounding the rest of the movie.
Once, I thought it would be cool to toss all of my unused electronic
cables into a bin so I’d always know where they are. Brilliant, right? Yeah, until I lost my old Gameboy adapter and
had to pull out my spare and realized I never wound up any of those old
cords. The result was a massive knot
made up of loose ends unfulfilled hopes.
Yeah, that’s Lovely Molly, alright.
It’s worth noting right off that bat that much of the acting was
top-notch, especially from newcomer Gretchen Lodge in her lead debut. She hands down owns the picture, performing
much of it alone, and spending much of that time in the buff. She’s fearless, dedicated, and convincing in
her portrayal of a young woman with a troubled past that’s caught up to
her. Or, maybe she’s possessed? No, the house is haunted, right?
 |
| Sorry, Gretchen, you're not getting paid more for all the weird sex stuff. |
Hell, even if you haven’t seen the movie, you may know just as much
about it as I do. For the entire length
of the film, Sanchez is trying to dupe us into believing any one of the three possibilities,
any number of which may be wrong. His
greatest success in The Blair Witch Project was tricking so many people into believing
such a silly story, sure, but what’s the point here? Looking back at movies like this – The Amityville
Horror, for example – this lack of clarity is typically the kind of thing that
infuriates viewers, so why would he intentionally toss it at the people paying
to see his movie?
This actually began long before the film’s release. Remember those six teaser short’s I
mentioned? These short films were
released on the world wide web in the weeks leading up to the film, two for
each theory, between demonic possession, abusive history, and haunting. They are presented in the same pseudo-documentary
format as much of the Blair Witch Project propaganda was, utilizing a ridiculous
narration that seems that it would be more at home as a queue narration at
Disneyland than a promotion for a horror film.
In the movie itself, scenes are tossed together with stacking evidence
for either scenario – from episodic tantrums, creepy moaning closets, a bunch
of weird rapey stuff, second-handed conversations, we can’t tell if Molly is
facing ghosts, demons, or a history of repressed sexual and physical abuse
finally taking their toll. What we do
know is that Molly has a history with drugs, her father was likely to be an
abusive man after the death of her mother, and he died in the house she is now
residing in. But no matter how much
evidence Sanchez throws into the mix, it’s all for waste by the film’s
conclusion. Don’t rush me, though, I’ll
get to it.
Now, I started to get hopeful.
For much of the film, we’re never shown any monsters or ghouls or devil
babies. We hear sounds, sure, and we
watch, despairingly, as Molly descends into a deep, traumatic madness. Everything can point back to mental illness,
to a psyche being shattered by the painful remembrance of her past as she
continues to live in her childhood home.
We’re talking about an abusive father, molestation, and isolation, the
same stuff that drove poor Molly to drug use.
We watch her return to that state of mind, and we watch her pain as she
tries to confront it.
What a beautiful device that would have been, a story about trauma and
bad memories – our metaphorical ghosts made literal by an unstable mind in
danger of collapsing. We could only be
so lucky. Here’s where I ought to warn
you, as you’re new to my style and I’m new to yours. I’m gonna talk about the end of the movie
here, so if you wanna split, do it now.
Like I said, all of this mounting evidence means very little by the
conclusion of the film.
 |
| Fresh from the Gwar concert. |
We find Molly at the bottom of the well – she is now a murderer, a
stalker, she’s shunned her sister, lost her husband, she’s trapped in a house
full of bad memories, a possible devil infestation, and maybe ghosts. What a drag, right? Well, it gets worse. With nothing left to cling to, she finally succumbs. In a scene that’s disturbingly and obscenely
sexual in the worst kind of ways, she accepts her demons, whether they’re the
scars of her past, a ghost in the closet, or, well, actual demons.
And, as it turns out, demons were exactly what it was.
After she’s finished giving up the rest of her innocence in her old
childhood bedroom, she morosely marches down the stairs, and out the front
door. Waiting in the yard for her, arms
outstretched, is some kind of devil with the face of a horse. No, not Sarah Jessica Parker, I mean, a
literal horse. But it doesn’t look
scary. I mean, I’d be willing to give
this thing a hug, regardless of whatever kind of ordeal happened in the upstairs
bedroom. It looked like something from
the goddamn Muppets.
In a short epilogue, Molly’s sister (whose name I can’t remember, but
is played by Alexandra Holden) walks through the house, investigating the empty
rooms and eerie doorways. In her
upstairs bedroom, she discovers the family photo album, where Molly had
replaced her father’s face with the heads of horses. Then, she looks up to the closet, opens it in
a manner identical to that of Molly, and BAM, she, too, is introduced to the
evil forces of the closet, same as her sister.
 |
| Sanchez is the rapey-looking one in the back. |
Providing those two ending scenes, it’s unlikely that any psychological
ties can be made. To me, that seems an
awful shame. The idea seemed crisp and
oddly romantic to me as I watched and hoped for something original or
marginally inspiring from the genre and Sanchez. That very small twist would have made the
picture a heartbreaking segue into the deterioration of the human mind in the
face of a true human horror instead of bleeding into the background with all
the other haunted and/or demonic house movies.
If you’re still interested in seeing it (you must be, or else you
wouldn’t have gotten this far into the article), then you can find it on DVD
wherever bad horror movies are sold on August 28.
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