The Curse of Betsy Bell

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title The Curse of Betsy Bell
Original title To American Haunting
Country of production United Kingdom ,
Canada ,
Romania
original language English
Publishing year 2005
length approx. 93 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Courtney Solomon
script Courtney Solomon
production Christopher Milburn ,
André Rouleau ,
Courtney Solomon
music Caine Davidson
camera Adrian Biddle
cut Richard Comeau
occupation

The Curse of Betsy Bell (Original title: An American Haunting ) is a horror thriller from 2005 by director and screenwriter Courtney Solomon .

action

The film begins in the present in the 21st century . A girl runs in a panic through a forest. She reaches a house, storms inside, and closes the front door behind her. Apparently she is being followed, but you cannot tell by whom. Once around the house, she uses a letter opener to defend herself and locks herself in her room. Then it starts to shake the door violently from the outside. The girl screams and wakes up, apparently it was just a dream. The girl's mother, divorced from her husband, tries to calm her down and finds an old doll in her room and a folder full of old documents that the girl had found in the attic. Her mother had forbidden her to go into the attic and is taking both things with her. In the folder there is a diary and an envelope on which the truth of our family story is written. She opens the envelope and begins reading the letter, which is dated November 1848. Now begins a flashback to the 19th century .

Red River, Tennessee , 1817: John Bell is charged in a church trial for robbing Kate Batts' land. She received a loan of 100 dollars from John Bell and his slave Samuel for the use of their land. Unable to pay the installments, she had forfeited ownership of the land and so it fell to John Bell. However, this had demanded 20 percent interest from her, which is usury and violates church law. That's why Kate Batts is getting her land back, but she has to forego the income from its use (John Bell had felled and sold their trees). The farmer Kate Batts, who is decried as a witch in town, swears to John Bell after the trial that he and his family will pay for it.

Spring 1818: From now on, inexplicable events happen to the Bell family. It starts with noises around the house and from the rooms. A black wolf appears several times and disappears again without a trace. Daughter Betsy sees a young girl who does not exist, she has terrible nightmares, and at night she is visited by an invisible being who attacks her. Later the ghost attacks the father John Bell as well, and the ghost begins to speak. Betsy's blood-stained clothes are found in a sack. Desperate John Bell seeks out Kate Batts, who puts a pistol in his hand and begs to put an end to everything. However, she refuses to shoot him and explains that it was not she who cursed him, but that he did it himself. He goes into the forest, wants to shoot himself and pulls the trigger, but the pistol does not fire a shot.

When the voice of the spirit speaks to Betsy, she realizes the truth: the spirit was created by herself, from the union of evil with her innocence, when her own father raped her. Part of her soul died when her father stole her innocence. The spirit should remind them of the repressed event and avenge them. The sack that appeared with Betsy's blood-stained clothes disappeared from her father after his crime on the property. The ghost also speaks to Betsy's mother, and she then also recognizes her husband's deed.

That night Betsy goes to her father and gives him poison, whereupon he dies. Your mother watches this but does not intervene. The ghost in the form of the little girl, who only Betsy can see, is now transformed from its terrible face into the normal Betsy. Liberated, the mind dissolves and disappears.

Back in the 21st century: The mother says goodbye to her daughter, who is now picked up in the car by the separated father. After the mother goes back into the house, she suddenly sees the ghost of Betsy with the bloodstained clothes in the crotch, which she had read about before. The ghost tells her that she must save her daughter. The mother runs out of the house and only sees her frightened face drive past in her father's car. She tries to run after the car and the door of the house closes by itself.

background

  • The film was marketed as a story based on true events, with text overlay at the beginning of the film underlining this again. In fact, the screenplay was based on a fictional novel: The 1997 book The Bell Witch: An American Haunting (German book title: The American Polterhexe ) by Brent Monahan. Whose novel uses a popular legend from Tennessee on the so-called Bell Witch ( Bell Witch on). This legend, in turn, is primarily based on a book from 1894 by Martin Van Buren Ingram entitled An Authenticated History of the Bell Witch of Tennessee , which was written around 60 years after the alleged incidents and thus there is already plenty of room for inaccurate and embellishing oral traditions. The then General Andrew Jackson , who years later became US President, is often named as a key witness . However, there are no statements, letters, notes, recordings or newspaper reports about Jackson's alleged encounter with the witch, not even from people with whom he had contact at the time. Historians have also meanwhile rated Ingram's book as a fictional novel that merely used real places and actual people to give it a semblance of credibility and thereby make it more interesting.
  • Production costs were estimated at around $ 14 million. The film grossed around 30 million US dollars in cinemas around the world, including around 16 million US dollars in the USA and around 0.2 million US dollars in Germany.
  • Filming began on August 4, 2004 and ended on February 16, 2005. The film was shot primarily in Romania , as well as (for some contemporary scenes) in Canada .
  • It was released in theaters in the USA on May 5, 2006 and in Germany on January 11, 2007.

Reviews

  • On Rotten Tomatoes , 8 out of 68 reviews were positive, giving an overall rating of 12 percent. The overall consensus is, “ Well, the movie looks good. But shouldn't it be terrifying? "
  • Rudolf Inderst wrote on filmspiegel.de: Big names like Sutherland or Spacek stumble a little listlessly through these low-tension, creepy clothes - but always accompanied by the very imaginative and creative tracking shots. [...] The ensemble moves relatively seldom outside the haunted house - in its strongest moments you even want to remember a little bit of ' Sleepy Hollow ', but these moments pass quickly.
  • Alexandra Wach wrote in film-dienst 01/2007: The effects are too harmless for regular horror customers, too unimaginative for fans of subtle shocks in the style of ' The Others '.
  • Lexicon of international film : narrated, nonetheless one-dimensional mystery thriller, which at best achieves some independence through its stringent camera aesthetics, but otherwise works uninspired by the genre specifications.

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The silly lies of An American Haunting (English)
  2. ↑ The Spirit of Red River (English)
  3. ↑ The Curse of Betsy Bell at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
  4. ↑ http://www.filmspiegel.de/filme/filme.php?id=3543
  5. ↑ quoted from: The Curse of Betsy Bell. (No longer available online.) In: Filmzeit. Archived from the original on September 12, 2016 ; Retrieved June 4, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.film-zeit.de
  6. ↑ The Curse of Betsy Bell - An American Haunting. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed June 4, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used