John
(Donald Sutherland) and Laura Baxter’s (Julie Christie) lives are shattered
when their young daughter Christine drowns while playing in a pool behind their
house. The death shakes the young family to the core, as it would any family,
but with time they find a way to move on. Their son is put in boarding school
and the parents move to Venice for a short while as John has found work renovating
an old church there. But just as their lives seem to be entering some form of
normalcy a chance encounter with two rather eccentric old ladies changes
everything. One of these two old ladies, two sisters to be precise, is blind.
And she claims to be psychic. A psychic who has a rather eerie plethora of
knowledge of Christine… She claims Christine has a message from beyond the
grave for her parents. Laura is interesting but John, ever the sceptic, refuses
to heed messages or read any kind of meaning other than the mundane to a series
of bizarre events taking place all around him. His, is of course, the way of
logic… But is logic the only explanation for things going on around us?
I think old
horror films are honestly things we, the children of the 21st
century should re-visit more often. Horror films today rely far too much on
jump-scares and CGI monsters I find. I mean sure, I’m in the mood for a good
scare from time to time. But these days we seem to have very little time for the
“creepy”. We no longer seem to have time to be “creeped out” slowly –we want it
all, at once, full sensory load, NOW. I blame the sheer amount of jump-scares
in horror. I also believe the pervasion of CGI and visual effects absolutely
EVERYWHERE. Now I’m not saying they shouldn’t be used by the bucket-load when
necessary. I personally am looking forward to watching The Desolation of Smaug
in 3D. But I’m very sad that “non-CGI” is being pushed further and further into
the back of the closet. One of the solutions if, like me, you are nostalgic for
this era is to watch older films like this little 1970’s number. Like I said in
the intro, you may want to wait for an evening when you are not too hyper to
watch it. Let it wash over you and slowly draw you in; this, people, is
basically a good old chills down your spine type tale. You gotta give the
chills time to settle in. iYou may be a bit disoriented by all the intercutting
images at first. It is quite atmospheric when you get “in” to the film, but I
haven’t seen the technique used so frequently in one film for a while so I kept
getting “snapped” out of the film, as it were – at least in the beginning. But
don’t be sceptical. Give it a shot. ‘Cos being a doubter did John no good, I
can tell you that much…
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