Beneath (2007)

Touches You

Lack of good storyline.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

This movie sure did start of with a Bang, what a way to start off, This movie had in me in from the very start too the very end of the movie.Christy (Zehetner) returns to her hometown years after a car accident that disfigured her older sister. Haunted by the accident in which she was the driver, she learns that her worst nightmares have either come true ... or are about to.I do agree that some of the plot was a bit predicable, However I really enjoyed the movie, I did not once take my eyes of the screen, I found the movie flowed really well, I was never bored.There were some great scenes in this movie, that stick with me, it not cause they are scary or creepy, as they are very memorable moments in this movie that really stood out. This might bw creepy for some kids or if this your first horror movie, I found some part of the movie predicable, I didn't expect that to happen at the end. I thought the make up effects were really good and dream effects were decent, I usually hate dream scenes in movies, some how this movie made them work well with the rest of the movie9 out of 10

Troubled young Christy (a fine and appealing performance by Nora Zehetner) returns to her home town after her sister Vanessa (a haunting portrayal by Carly Pope) dies after suffering serious burn injuries in an automobile accident. However, Christy continues to be tormented by disturbing visions of murder and violence, so she decides to find out more about the circumstances pertaining to her sister's untimely death. Director Dagen Merrill, who also co-wrote the compact and compelling script with Kevin Burke, relates the absorbing story at a steady pace, does an ace job of crafting a quietly spooky atmosphere, grounds the premise in a plausible everyday reality, stages the harrowing climax with skill and assurance, and, best of all, places a welcome and refreshing emphasis on a delicately unsettling mood of unease and mystery over the standard crude assortment of cheap scares and graphic gore. Moreover, the grotesque make-up f/x for the hideously disfigured Vanessa are top-notch and there's even a touching element of genuine pathos and regret. The bang-up acting by the excellent cast further keeps the movie on track, with especially commendable contributions from Matthew Settle as the secretive John, Jessica Amlee as precocious little girl Amy, and Gabrielle Rose as the flinty Mrs. Locke. Mike Southern's crisp cinematography provides a handsome bright look. The eerie and elegant score by John Frizzell and Frederick Wiedmann hits the spine-chilling spot. Worthwhile fright fare.

Beneath starts with one of those implausible accidents where a car that doesn't seem to be driving too fast hits some boxes of earth that have been left out on the road (as you do) causing them to skid and crash.Kristy (Heroine) is thrown from the car while her sister Vanessa (on the non-impacted side) appears to be trapped and then the fuel tank explodes.One could say that Vanessa should never have let Kristy drive, as she was under age, and if she was going to let her then possibly not standing in the passenger seat whooping may have helped. Possibly not.Kristy is heading to the funeral of the caretaker, Joseph, who seemed to have cared for her after her sisters death (except we know she isn't really because we see many shots of her burned skin - and alive). In fact Kristy thinks she was buried alive - there can't be far fewer hints that she is alive can there? At times the script seems to have little idea where it is going. Lines which may have once meant to establish something, the doctors family with the mine they had trouble closing and John Locke's mother who speaks the "ancient tongue" - a mix between a number of European languages - all seem to be badly devised red herrings or more likely writers ideas that were never edited out.Kristy however wants to find out the truth and Nora Zehetner (Kristy) really tries to get something out of a stodgy script. However with John acting all evil you feel the actor has read to the end of the script and found out that he is... well evil, or mad, or just badly written as he is acted.Kristy also suffers from hallucinations and this for me is one of the main points that lets the film down. If her hallucinations were really this bad would she have been let out of the mental hospital, especially when some of her visions see her causing people harm or blacking out for 2 hour periods only to be found fitting in your friends back garden (a friend you are staying with because you forgot to ask beforehand if you could stay at your brother-in-laws place).Other questions arise as to whether school websites really do carry peoples personal details (I'll have to check my own for phone numbers), how much light can a mobile phone really produce and why Mr Wells uses a shotgun to shoot at birds. My favorite is the fact that the police take Kristy at night and the next shot she is in the back seat in full daylight. Were they taking her for a cruise round town? Finally when Vanessa is found to be alive (gasp, shock) she has one of those pro-active kill spree agendas which is never truly explained by the plot.There are positives to be taken here and it does not outstay its welcome however Beneath really does little to complement itself either, bar Nora Zehetner and a reasonable music score.

***WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS ***"An honest life ends in a peaceful death" —Proverb."Beneath" is a horror flick released straight to video and marks the directorial debut of Dagen Merrill, co-written with Kevin Burke (who also wrote 2003's "Tahiti", an indie drama that earned some critical praise).Christy Wescot (Nora Zehetner, "Brick") is a 20-year-old pre-med student who cannot fully live her own life since her older sister Vanessa (Carly Pope, "Sandra Goes to Whistler") was killed in a car accident six years earlier, in which Christy was driving. "Give me the wheel! Christy!" could have been the last words she remembers from her sister, who was also a young mother and the wife of John Locke (Matthew Settle), a local doctor in the town of Edgemont.The sudden death of family caretaker Joseph (Don S. Davis) prompts a phone call from John to Christy informing her that the funeral services will be held next Saturday. This phone call releases the latent anxiety Christy has been suppressing for the past six years. So when Christy jumps aboard a bus, she's already been fired from her job and is in need of antidepressants for a diagnosed borderline personality disorder spurred by her guilt over her sister's injuries. "Why did you go away?" her niece Amy (Jessica Amlee) asks her. Christy sardonically replies, "I went to prep school" (University of South California). Now Christy's niece lives in the Locke family home with dad and her grandma, the ominous Mrs. Locke (Gabrielle Rose), whom her cute red-haired granddaughter calls a "weirdo", and she is indeed, since she disappears from the dinner table and prefers to eat alone in her place. Amy is convinced a dark, mysterious thing killed good ol' Joseph and that Grandma is mean and secretive. Nora Zehetner maintains a mesmerizing tension from the very beginning. When she contemplates her arrival home to the small town from which she's been disconnected for a long time but has never severed her ties to, she does an awe-inspiring job of conveying Christy's conflicting emotions. And this is one of the main reasons the film succeeds, because its plot devices rely basically on our empathy for the lead character. There are moments that as a viewer we can notice the story would dry up if Christy couldn't find a new clue, a new clear thought, an accusatory gaze from some of the townspeople who have become strangers to her. She finds it difficult to reconnect with a junior high school friend, Debbie Houston (Nicola Anderson) and the townsfolk try to make her move on. Christy must not only hide the pain of her lonely existence and the hallucinations that plague her, she also has to face the humiliation of condescending treatment from the neighbours, nurses, and cops around her; though one of them, Jeff Burdan (Warren Christie), is pretty kind to her, his cop pal Randy (Patrick Gilmore) makes a cruel remark before being introduced to Christy.Christy investigates some circumstances that occurred during the six months of rehabilitation that Vanessa received in Locke's home immediately after the accident, a losing battle against a certain death. Christy finds out this rehabilitation took place in a room beneath Locke's house where Vanessa was attended by a nurse named Claire Wells (Eliza Norbury) whom supposedly left town and moved to Portland, Maine. Christy also investigates the details about Vanessa's burial, as well as her medical files (which are now in private access for John Locke), all the while succumbing to near psychotic states when she suffers random seizures that lead her to draw darkly artistic portraits of people and threatening symbols. The laid-back manner of the townspeople grate on Christy's nerves as they stubbornly deny her suspicions regarding her sister's death. Christy is constantly perceived as an unstable, meddling girl, which fits these simple-minded locals struggling in a post-mining economy ruled by Locke's dynasty.But as another character says to Christy at the beginning of the story, "Death is always hardest on the living." And this obsession with her sister's death makes the heroine's lunatic mind spin frantically like a profaned coffin. "It lives in my walls. I hear it crying". "I take pictures 'cause I can't draw", Amy says.Passageways designed for escaping the mines, locked entrances, insects-plagued basements will confuse us as much as they confuse Christy in her confused mental state; the film is soaked with the romantic, timeless beauty of Nora Zehetner, whose performance as an isolated young woman with a precipitous imagination elicits our innate sympathy and conquers our hearts in the end. Zehetner's Poe-like heroine maybe is a paraphrenic without love life but she's the last voice standing against the apathy and lack of conscience that the town represents. Christy awakens our sedated morals, defending her right to unmask her tortured soul, a beautiful, vulnerable but never weak, Miss Lonely in the land of guilt". http://jake-weird.blogspot.com/2007/08/beneath.html