Lovely Molly (2012)

(aka Crazy Molly?)
Release Date: VOD now, DVD/Blu on August 28th.
Country: USA
Written by: Eduardo Sanchez and Jamie Nash.
Directed by: Eduardo Sanchez.
Starring: Gretchen Lodge, Alexandra Holden and Johnny Lewis.

Is this the story of a woman being haunted by demons, or is it merely the tale of another crazy bitch, doing crazy things? Honestly, I can't say. Maybe it's both?

Lovely Molly is one of those "let the audience decide" types of endeavors. If you like your horror laced with ambiguity, you'll devour this one feverishly. If you prefer answers to being left to figure shit out on your own, you'll devour it just the same (because it's a good flick), but you'll most likely hork it right back up once you've finished.

Either way, what we have here is a stylish and well made movie by one of the minds that brought us The Blair Witch Project, Eduardo Sanchez. For the record, this may just be his best film to date.

Molly and Tim are Newlyweds who move into her old family home to start their new lives together. Problem is, some creepy and horrible things happened to Molly and her big sister Hannah in that house when they were kids, and now those things are coming back to haunt the happy couple. Or are they? It looks as if Molly's drug use is coming back to haunt them too.

She doesn't look high at all.

Between all of the weird noises, odd happenings, and someone stalking around outside with a video camera, Molly can't catch a break. It doesn't help that Tim is a Truck Driver, and is always on the road, leaving her alone in the house to face these things alone... with heroin of course. Creepiness and lack of explanations ensue.

What is it?!?

Lovely Molly had me hooked for the first half of its running time; it was tight and tense, and made me wonder just what was lurking around the next corner for Molly and her hubby. It eventually moved into the land of ambiguity and lost a bit of its edge a bit past the halfway point, but it was still a hell of a ride to endure.

Eduardo Sanchez knows how to make an effective horror movie, that much is clear. Blair Witch was a fantastic and genre defining (whether you loved it or hated it, you can't deny its impact) movie. His next big feature, Seventh Moon, was such a shaky-cam mess that we found it to be mostly unwatchable. Shame, that, because underneath all of the shitty visuals was a pretty good story. With Lovely Molly, he keeps the Found Footage/POV tricks to a minimum, and offers us a straight up horror movie. Overall, it was well made and packed plenty of scares into its framework.

We have to tip our hats to newcomer Gretchen Lodge, or else we'd be fools. She came out of nowhere and delivered one hell of a performance, especially for this being her first film. we truly hope that we get to see more genre work from her in the future.

What in the hell was Crash Bandicoot doing in this movie, and was he real? I need to know. 
Everybody who is writing or directing lower budget horror flicks these days really needs to quit trying to out-clever each other. All of the ambiguous "I left it open to the audiences interpretation" bullshit is growing old. We need a little more cause with our effect. It doesn't even feel creative anymore when filmmakers more or less leave their films open ended; most of the time, it just feels like a cop out. More and more these days were left saying "so what happened?" at the end of movies (or sometimes during), and it's just getting tiring. Make a stand guys. Pick a road and go down it; allude to some obscure things along the side of the road or what lies just beyond our site in the forest, but pick a damn road.

Is it live, or is it her mental Memorex?

Where the movie lost me, was somewhere in the middle of the "this bitch is obviously crazy and violent, but lets not get her any real help because talking to her will suffice" bullshit. Now, I understand that the couple in this movie was basically poor and couldn't afford health insurance, but with all of the crazy shit that Molly was doing, they really needed to get her help. Have her committed or something. Plenty of poor people are in the nuthouse, and for her sister to basically say "no, don't call anyone for help, I'll talk to her and everything will be fine." was just nonsensical. And for that matter, why would Molly move into a house where such awful things happened to her when she was a child, especially being a recovering drug addict? Why would her sister let her? Why not sell the house and start fresh? Bah.

Yeah, you know what happened.

Aside from a dead deer and a few screwdriver-induced stabbings, this one isn't too heavy on the graphic stuff. There's also some baseball bat violence and a few corpses lying around too. And a near-suicide. But that's it.

Nasty Molly.

Lovely Molly gets naked a few times throughout this one, which ended up being more creepy than it was pleasant. Still, good for her for not being scared of a little nudity.

Why big sister didn't get naked, we'll never know.

You never marry a girl with severe daddy issues. Also, if you do marry her, you treat her right. That means no looking at other girls, guys!

Don't worry, Molly. We don't know either.

Lovely Molly is a solid and engaging flick that does most things right for most of its running time. It loses a bit of traction for us with some of the plot elements, but even with those faults that irked us so much, this movie is one that we really dug. If you can't check it out on VOD where you live, make sure to see it when it hits DVD/Blu-ray in two weeks time. This one is a solid B- for us.

It seems as though Lovely Molly has herself a lovely sister, making her Lovely Molly' Sister. They're both actually quite lovely, as it turns out.