By Richard Winters
My Rating: 2 out of 10
4-Word Review: Ghost child haunts home.
Julia (Mia Farrow) leaves her husband Magnus (Keir Dullea) after their child accidently chokes on some food and dies. She then moves into a large home, which also had a child die in it years before. After Julia begins living there for a while she notices the presence of a ghostly spirit and holds a séance run by Mrs. Flood (Anna Wing) where she learns that a child was murdered by a group of other children lead by the mischievous Olivia, who is now the one haunting her home.
The film is based on an early Peter Straub noveI, but seems all mixed up in what direction it wants to take and I couldn’t understand why the first part of the story dealing with her child dying was even needed as the second half goes into an entirely different direction. It also introduces a solid nemesis in the form of her controlling ex-husband who dies off quickly, which again left me wondering why his character was even put into the story at all.
The choking aspect is another issue and I was genuinely shocked they showed it as it’s hard to effectively pull off without it looking unintentionally comical. Having the child get hit by a train, car, slipping off the side of a cliff, or even drowning is far more dramatic and could leave a lasting visual impact whereas this looks as clumsily staged as it sounds.
The séance should’ve been avoided too since that has been parodied so much in movies that it’s hard to take seriously. The film doesn’t approach it with any new interesting angle so it comes-off as tacky as every other séance you’ve seen in a movie, even the funny ones, and yet this one we’re supposed to take seriously even though any sane participant would be convinced that the woman leading it was simply overacting for affect, which is how it looks.
The backstory involving the female child who was able to somehow control the other boys in the neighborhood to do her bidding had an intriguing element, which made me think that’s what should’ve been played out while the ghost angle dropped completely. Instead it could’ve analyzed the psycho young girl while she was alive and examined how she got the way that she did and what methods she used to convince the other kids to do what she wanted, which is never explored, but would’ve been far scarier than what ultimately gets played out.
Farrow with her super short haircut looks too much like she did in Rosemary’s Baby and a different do was needed to avoid the resemblance. Dullea has potential as the heavy, but then disappears too soon. The only one that does shine is veteran actress Cathleen Nesbit who hams it up as the mother of the killer girl, but overall the rest of it is a big letdown including the non-eventful ending that completely fizzles making it no surprise why the studio left this one sitting on the shelf for 5 years before finally giving a limited release that netted it very little in return.
Alternate Title: Full Circle
My Rating: 2 out of 10
Released: May 29, 1981 (Filmed in 1976)
Runtime: 1Hour 38Minutes
Rated R
Director: Richard Loncraine
Studio: Discovery Films
Available: DVD (Out-of-Print), Amazon video, YouTube
Scopophilia 