Checked out pretty much the only new post-Thanksgiving release horror flick The Possession of Hannah Grace. Not really properly titled as its not a typical Exorcist knockoff flick but instead resides in a weird sub-genre of medical examiner/morgue/mortician movies. So if you’ve seen something like The Autopsy of Jane Doe, you’re more on the mark.
So this movie starts at the end of most Exorcist movies… a couple of priests have a young girl strapped to a bed and are chucking holy water at her while chanting form the Bible. Things go south and Pazuzu ain’t spittin’ up any more pea soup. Three months later, we are introduced to a young ex-cop turned night morgue attendant who intakes a badly cut and burned corpse of a young girl. Turns out she might not be all that dead… turns out her prints says she’s young Hanna Grace, pronounced dead due to a botched exorcism. A good 80 minutes later, most of the people working night shift are dead because, yeah, the corpse kept on not staying dead.
This is a movie that tries really hard to be better than its bare-boned script. Yes, it’s kind of nice to have a possession movie that doesn’t’ focus on all the usual things (the stuff the movie starts with)… but it has to replace it with more than “did that corpse move?” moments for practically its full run time. This would have have made a fine 30 minute episode of something but stretches to the breaking point at only 88 minutes (with credits).
But the director and cinematographer do seem to be trying. The movie is dark and moody looking though sometimes it mistakes dark for automatic scary. The characters are given more depth and background than I’d have expected. It’s not just throw-away back-story here… I kind of liked the morgue attendant gal and her police backstory. I liked her enough that I wish she were in a better movie.
The movie isn’t a disaster. It’s a well-meaning but underwritten movie that the director and actors can’t make better. You spend more time waiting and dealing with cliche scares and moments than you do really getting into it. Nice try, but they just gotta do better.
Score: 73