“CHOOSE LIFE!”
Main Cast: Adam Brody, Amanda Crew
Director: Robert Heydon
Well that was underwhelming, to say the least.
Yet another couple moves into a new house—this time they’re pregnant—only to find something evil is waiting for them.
This time it’s Matt (Adam Brody) and Larissa Kane (Amanda Crew) and their soon-to-be-born son Colton. Only Colton is stillborn and from there everything spirals out of control. For Larissa. Matt’s a busy man at work—he’s a lawyer—and he doesn’t really have time for this nonsense; he’s got depositions all day tomorrow. Larissa needs to take the pills her doctor prescribed and let Matt do his job!
Only Larissa is seeing things. First it’s Colton, alive and crying in his crib. But the sightings soon devolve into what they really are: ISABELLE.
Isabelle is the daughter of their neighbor. Wheelchair-bound, she sits at her window all day looking out at the world she can’t be a part of. Mostly because her mother killed her soon after Matt and Larissa moved in. Which would explain how a woman confined to a wheelchair moves so easily about their house.
What does the ghost want? To have her body found and put to rest? For her mother—her murderer—to be brought to justice? No, she wants something else.
I often wonder what recognizable actors think when they get scripts like this. I mean Adam Brody’s not a HUGE star, but you know him when you see him, and Amanda Crew was in 53 episodes of Silicon Valley, so what the hell are they doing in this movie? The screenplay is by Donald Martin who, if this guy isn’t a Hallmark or Lifetime Movie Network staff writer (THE CHRISTMAS CHOIR, MURDER SHE BAKED, OPERATION CHRISTMAS, CHRISTMAS HOMECOMING and CHRISTMAS TOWN to name a few) then I don’t know who is, and it’s directed by Robert Heydon, he of Electric Playground fame? Again, why are they in this???
If I were either of them, the second I saw the red eye effects that look like they came out of a 1983 music video—floating red blotches of color that almost sometimes line up with the eyes they’re being overlayed on top of—I’d have called my agent. And fired them.
But it’s not ALL bad. I watched this one on July 4th while the neighbors were regaling the neighborhood with all their incredibly loud and obnoxious fireworks. But I turned on my speakers and the incredibly loud and obnoxious soundtrack every time something “scary” happened on screen helped drown out the explosions outside my window. So thanks, ISABELLE?
C. Dennis Moore is the author of over 60 published short stories and novellas in the speculative fiction genre. Most recent appearances are in the Dark Highlands 2, What Fears Become, Dead Bait 3 and Dark Highways anthologies. His novels are Revelations, and the Angel Hill stories, The Man in the Window, The Third Floor, and The Flip.
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