Director Courtney Solomon’s direction in the film “An American Haunting” was well done in some aspects. I believe that he used the elements of atmosphere to his advantage and played with it to draw the audience into the dark winter of 1818. Unfortunately, like with most of today’s horror films, some of the events were predictably done. Solomon had a lot to work with and could have done a lot more with the entity, but instead it wound up being predictable in its scare tactics. The 1981 movie, “The Entity” came to mind several times.
The
acting was incredible. I had not seen or heard of Rachel-Hurd Wood (Betsey Bell), but she did an excellent job. She was attacked by the ghost periodically and it was hard to tell that she was acting. The look of horror painted across her face was very realistic.
In some movies you can look into the actor’s eyes and there is a certain something that reveals that they are merely doing a job. This was not the case.
Donald Sutherland and Sissy Spacek on the other hand had very down played roles. I was ...
