Lovely Molly

Much as he did in ‘The Blair Witch Project’, director Eduardo Sánchez mixes conventionally filmed scenes with ‘found footage’ flashbacks and ‘live’ recordings made by a paranoid female protagonist in this ambitious but erratic horror. After being left alone in her dead parents’ isolated farmhouse, newlywed Molly (played with conviction by Gretchen Lodge), is assailed by eerie noises, snatches of song and paranormal disturbances. This might push anyone over the edge, but Molly is also haunted by buried memories of childhood abuse and a battle with heroin addiction. Despite the support of a hard-working husband, sympathetic sister, a local cop and a concerned priest, Molly insists she is no longer in control. Yet her fascination with a mysterious dark void in one of the farm’s outbuildings hints that demonic possession may be the cause of her psychosis. Ambiguity is legitimate, but not when it supplants sense. And especially not when a film’s cynical hedging of its psychological/supernatural bets seems mostly designed to breed sequels.