Lovely Molly (2011) Reviews

• Ambiguous Horror Movie

  claudio_carvalho2013-04-04

  The janitor Molly (Gretchen Lodge) marries the truck driver Tim (Johnny Lewis) and they move to the house of her deceased parents. Tim needs to drive and leaves Molly alone in the house. Soon Molly is haunted by her past and by her abusive father and she sees him in the house. Molly uses drugs again and records everything with her camera, expecting to prove that she is not crazy. Meanwhile, her sister Hannah (Alexandra Holden), Tim and his friend, Pastor Bobby (Field Blauvelt) try to help her, but Molly becomes dangerous and violent. "Lovely Molly" is an ambiguous horror movie where it is not clear whether Molly is possessed by the evil spirit of her abusive father or whether she is mentally ill, after an incident with Tim and a neighbor a couple of days after her birthday. This is basically the debut of the unknown Gretchen Lodge and she delivers a top-notch performance. The screenplay is a little messy and the director fails in the conclusion, and maybe this is the reason of the bad reviews in IMDb. My vote is seven. Title (Brazil): "Adorável Molly" ("Lovely Molly")

• Eduardo Sánchez's new psyche-out horror flick is altogether spooky.

  thesubstream2011-09-15

  Director Eduardo Sánchez begins his newest spooky feature Lovely Molly with a deliberate shout out the the film that brung him here, The Blair Witch Project (co-directed with Daniel Myrick). A crying woman confesses into a videocamera, capturing herself in a moment of distress and hoping to leave a clue to be discovered after she inevitably succumbs to an off-screen terror. Sánchez hasn't returned exactly to his old stomping ground of first-person documentary horror - Lovely Molly is for the most part a spooky old fashioned psyche-out horror film - but it's a nice touch in a film filled with them. Molly and new husband Tim (Gretchen Lodge and Johnny Lewis) are ripped from sleep in their new inherited home by a squalling alarm. Someone has opened their back door and is thumping around in the kitchen, but police find nothing out of the ordinary and chalk it up to the wind despite Tim's insistence that he locked the door. He's a truck driver, and is away from home for stretches of time in which Molly is left alone to deal with a growing malignancy, a presence in the house that manifests itself as sung voices, crying children, clomping horse hooves and slamming doors. Molly's afraid to reach out to her sister or husband for help, fearing that they'll assume she's lapsed back into substance abuse. She instead begins to videotape her encounters, and it's this footage, as well as taped footage of someone stalking neighbours and visiting an odd underground shrine of some sort, that forms the frightening backbone of the film. As Sánchez himself claimed in a post-screening q&a, the film is as much an "indie relationship" film and "actor's piece" as horror film. The entire weight of the film is on newcomer Lodge's back and she pulls the whole thing off dazzlingly well, transforming from a slight, trembling girl into a stalking, haunted and threatening woman crawling through an empty house. It's a performance good enough, combined with Sánchez's legitimate gift for crafting arresting moments of weird, totemic and animalistic horror, to transcend the film's kind of tired "is it a ghost or a hallucination" set-up, and take the whole thing into straight-up spooky, straight-up original territory.

• Gets under your skin

  edgure32012-08-28

  OK, so I know the reviews for this one have been pretty mixed, but for fans of psychological horror that don't mind an ambiguous story line, I highly recommend Lovely Molly. As a massive horror enthusiast who sees EVERYTHING, I can tell you there are only a few films per year that have the ability to get under my skin, and this is one of them. Although not a particularly sadistic or violent film, Molly's (newcomer Gretchen Lodge) descent into depravity is entirely convincing in a very realistic and unpleasant manor. Her back story is left intentionally vague, which makes the proceedings much more horrific. As horror fans we all know the downfall of over exposition...once we know exactly whats going on it's just not scary anymore. To say much more about the story could hinder one's viewing experience but I will say to make sure you CRANK your surround system or watch with headphones because the sound design is a vital part of the film. Many scenes feature sonic subtleties which could easily be missed, and constant attention to detail (take note of the crackle heard every time Molly drags a cigarette). So anyways, Lovely Molly has my vote for one of the year's best in horror, and I can't wait to see what's next for both Sanchez and Lodge.

• It creeps and creaks its way to an unexpected end

  gregsrants2011-09-15

  "Whatever happened, it wasn't me", says Molly in the opening shot as she holds a knife to her own throat. But exactly what happened and who it was by the film's end remains uncertain. Lovely Molly is the new film by Eduardo Sánchez, the brilliant director behind 1999's The Blair Witch Project. The film stars Gretchen Lodge as Molly, a beautiful newlywed that moves into her old home with her husband after the death of her father. Within three months of their arrival at the home, unexplained phenomena begin to happen around the house. Door alarms go off in the middle of the night and footsteps could be heard throughout the structure. Molly's husband Tim (Johnny Lewis) does not have an explanation for some of the occurrences, but as a truck driver who is rarely at home, he leaves Molly in the house with the confidence that is must be 'the wind' or local kids playing a prank. Molly, however, continues to be victimized by what haunts the house. With Tim gone, she relies on her sister Hanna (Alexandra Holden) to provide her comfort but with a lack of sleep and feeling as if she is losing her grip on reality, Molly resorts back to injecting herself with drugs – an addiction thought beat before marriage. When Tim arrives home one evening he finds Molly naked staring at the ceiling in her room. She softly states "He's alive" and this statement will initiate an intensity in strange occurrences and violence that will lead to tragic results. Lovely Molly is a multi-layered horror film that mixes POV camera work into the film to give an authentic feel into a terrifying reality. Sánchez cast his film perfectly and Gretchen Lodge, as Molly, appears in just about every scene carrying the film on her naked back. The horror in Lovely Molly comes in small doses and intensifies as the plot develops. The audience is aware early that there is something wrong with Molly, but is it supernatural? Is she possessed? Or does her drug abuse have Molly realizing a non-existent entity? All these questions abound and the journey to some open-ended answers is worth the time investment. Eduardo Sánchez works the camera like a seasoned pro and is not quick to bring the story or any of the events to a quick resolve. Instead, the horror elements mount until Molly passes a point of no return and where family secrets haunt long after the death of her parents. Lovely Molly ends up being one of those great horror films where if watched in the right frame of mind and at the right time of night can really scare the bejezus out of you. It doesn't attempt to go for the jugular or splatter the screen with scenes of gore that attempt to top the latest splatterfest. Instead, it stays true to its plotted course and reels in its audience – paying them back with an above average genre film the creeps, creaks and cringes its way to an unexpected end.

• Feels routine

  Leofwine_draca2015-05-18

  LOVELY MOLLY is a BLAIR WITCH follow-up from director Eduardo Sanchez. In it, a newly wed couple movie back to the childhood home of the wife, only for her to start experiencing flashbacks and hallucinations as dark secrets from her past are dug back up again. This is a slow burning, atmospheric horror film that unfortunately misses the mark too often for me. It doesn't help that the characters, particularly the protagonist, are too unlikeable for me to enjoy the movie. Everything about this is greyed out and downbeat, and the segments filmed found footage style are intrusive; with found footage it's all or nothing. The opening scene with the burglar alarm going off is the only one which is truly menacing. The whole mysterious "secrets from the past" aspect of the storyline is an all-too-familiar one from a lot of modern horror movies and there's just too little incident here to attract my attention. Even worse, some of the stylistic choices are annoying in the extreme, such as the constant tinnitus-inducing ringing on the soundtrack. I appreciate what Sanchez was trying to do here but for me, it's a failure.