Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

I have been interested in the Bell Witch of Tennessee Haunting since I was a little girl. The Bell Witch was the name given to an entity that allegedly haunted the Bell family in the early 1800s. Hundreds of eyewitnesses documented the scratching, talking, and physical violence that came from an unseen force that would reap havoc on certain members of the family.

An American Haunting sets itself up as the true story of the Bell family, and reminds you that the Bell Haunting is the only case where paranormal activity caused the death of a human being. Without giving up the ending, I will tell you that the movie completely rejects this statement in it's logic, and offers us a watered down, Hollywood version that scarcely hints at the "truth."

Not content to simply start the story in Tennessee, in the 1800’s, so we can have a better sense of who the Bell family is, the creators of this script thought we would need to start in the present day, and have some meaningless drama going on that would cause a mother with a mentally distressed daughter to sit down with a bottle of vodka and read two hundred year old letters that just now made their way down from the attic. Nothing can take you out of the scene faster than continuously coming back from a flashback to watch mom turn another page and stare at the same picture of Betsy Bell and her husband. I would also like to give the director credit here for allowing the insightful people among us to figure out who is supposed to die within the first ten minutes of the film.

Donald Sutherland tries desperately to give weight to his roll as John Bell, the southern, slave-owning gentleman who ticks off the wrong person and possibly gets a curse put on him. Sissy Spacek is his loving wife, Lucy, and Rachel Hurd-Wood is the forlorn daughter who, even after being slapped silly and dragged across a room, still manages to have on the best shade of lipstick that I have ever seen, and not a bruise on her.

The audience is subjected to several scenes where the music gets ridiculously loud and then quiet, so we can all jump when something scary happens, and the music gets REALLY LOUD again. The ghost scenes are represented in a way that reminds me of going into Adobe Photoshop and messing with all of the cool photo filters. Everything will be normal, and then suddenly they burst into flashes of black & white, charcoal sketch, polarized, and grainy. The pacing of the film after the initial set up is repetitious, and can be summed up simply: Boo! Why? Boo! Why? Boo! Why? Boo! Death. Boo Hoo, but not really. Why? Oh. End.

The story also attempts to bring some mystery into it: Why is the Witch there? Who did this to the Bell family? What are the names of the other characters in this movie? Where did their accents go? Why did they cast two young boys to be in the family when they said or did nothing but slept the entire time? The end of the movie leaves us with a pseudo scientific (and that is bad coming from a ghost hunter) explanation for the phenomenon, and we don’t feel like we have gained any sense of who the Bell family was. We also couldn’t care less when we come back to the present and have to tie up any connections. In real life, the Witch appeared at the funeral after “the big death,” came back seven years later, and then never again. Why they needed to contrive another story to lead us into the Bell family makes no sense.

An American Haunting earned it's PG-13 rating mostly for intensity, the jump factor, beatings by an unseen force, and a sensitive subject that I can't really tell you about without ruining the "big unveil." There is little blood, no gore, and no on-screen sex. Anyone that could sit through an R-rated horror should have no problem with this movie.

As someone familiar with this case, I was looking for certain infamous true scenarios to be shown. For instance, in the real tales the Witch genuinely loved Lucy. One time Lucy said she was hungry and the spirit went and got her some walnuts that appeared from thin air and dropped into Lucy’s hands. When Lucy said she had nothing to crack them with, the Witch obliged and all of the nuts cracked open. There were purportedly also incidents when the spirit would quote passages from the Bible, sing any song asked, and even invite other entities into the house to have celebrations. All of these things that make the Bell Witch case unique are gone from the movie, replaced by scene after scene of Betsy being horrified, Betsy being attacked, and Betsy being delusional.

This movie could have been so much more, and I am disappointed that they took a two-hundred year old, well known tale, and turned it into a light version of “The Others.” If you want to be creeped out by the story read one of the dozens of books written on the subject. If you feel like a standard Hollywood scare flick then go see this, but I suggest watching it matinee.


Recommended: No

Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older