Florence Cathcart (Rebecca Hall) is probably the world's first ghost hunter. Or at least ghost disprover (is that a word?). Set in England in the 1920's, Cathcart uses science to disprove hauntings and scam artists. After finishing a job she is approached by Robert Mallory (Dominic West), a WWI veteran and school teacher at a private boarding school. At first she thinks he is just a fan of her book, but in fact he seeks her help. It turns out that the school he works at may or may not be haunted by a murder that took place there over almost 20 years ago when it was a private residence. Lately, the children have been complaining about the ghost and one child even died.
She packs up all of her scientific tools for ghost hunting and heads to the school to investigate. The governess Maud (Imelda Staunton) is a huge fan of her work and is anxiously awaiting her arrival. When she gets there, she is given a brief tour before setting up her booby traps (sorry I mean experiments) ready to catch the real "ghost" haunting the school. In the middle of the night her traps start going off leading her on a chase all over the school. But its when she notices a school replica in an empty room that she gets the feeling she is not alone. Out of the corner of her eye she catches the glimpse of a child and chases after him only to find nothing.
The next day, she is able to prove who one of the child pretending to be a ghost was due to evidence from her equipment. She is also able to pin point that the child's death was probably cause of an asthma attack and he didn't die of fright. Everyone seems thrilled that the mystery is solved except she still wonders who the second child was. While pondering the question she drops her cigarette case into the pond.
Now here is where things start to get screwy. She believes she is seeing ghosts around the school again. This time a man with a shotgun. Luckily she had cameras ready to take pictures. Mallory helps her to develop the film to prove there is another person in the now empty school, but nothing appears on the pictures. Feeling lost and confused she ends up macking with Mallory (well maybe a little more than that), but once they finished they hear bells sounding off from a random room. When Mallory goes to investigate, a face pops out from the pillow next to Florence. So naturally she beats the living shit out of that pillow ripping it apart. Feathers everywhere. And in that giant mess of feathers she finds her cigarette case.
Now I left out a lot of important details and scares just in case anyone out there decides to watch the movie and wants to be somewhat surprised. I thought it was interesting to see how they took the ghost hunting equipment and made it more appropriate for the time period, although highly unlikely that it actually existed. Also, when you see the "ghost" (and this is just my opinion) it just made me laugh the whole time because it looked like the photographs from The Ring. Why would a ghost look like that?
Rating: ***
No comments:
Post a Comment