Chad

Undeadcow

The kid point of view narration, similar to Christmas Story, is a nice touch infusing a Hardy Boys charm. The Halloween and Christmas segments keep that spirit of youthfulness that bolsters a childlike curiosity about the ghost. The imagery especially at the ending is good. Who would have thought a child's point of view horror movie would work so well?

rbrown498

An interesting (if overlong) ghost story set in 1962, Lady in White is also a pretty engaging mystery. Someone killed a child in the cloakroom of the school ten years ago, and, because he's been locked in that same cloakroom due to a prank, 10-year-old Frankie sees a ghostly reenactment of the murder. Unfortunately, he also sees the killer come back to retrieve a piece of evidence, and Frankie almost gets killed when he's discovered by the killer. The room is too dark for him to see the face of his attacker, and thus the mystery gets set in motion. The ghost story is actually rather incidental to the plot (save for one big clue that Frankie gleans from the ghostly reenactment), and it serves mainly to inject a bit of Spielbergian magic into the proceedings. While I liked this film a lot when it first came out, it hasn't worn well, with too much comic relief from the main character's grandparents and too many loose plot threads. For instance, the film begins with Frankie flying into the local airport and hiring a cab to take him from the airport to (presumably) his father's house. In the cab, we learn that he's a writer of horror novels. Adult Frankie asks the cab driver to stop at a cemetery, where he visits two gravestones. The film then segues into the past, where Adult Frankie chimes in with helpful narration a time or two. When the film ends, it ends in the past, and we never find out what happened to Adult Frankie. He never even adds a voice-over saying "And that's what happened when I was ten," or something to that effect, a la Stand by Me. Still, it's a much better film than LaLoggia's previous Fear No Evil, and except for a few cheesy special effects, it looks pretty good. It's not a fully satisfying film, but it's not a total waste of time, either.

Trevor

I really enjoyed almost every aspect of it. Understand your criticism's up there rbrown, but they didn't bother me much. I was totally sucked into the story and almost watched it twice, which I never do during a year, unless there is a commentary.

clckworang

I could have sworn I watched this during one of the challenges, but I couldn't find it on any of my lists. It must have been a challenge leftover one year. Anyway, I actually wasn't a big fan of the movie then. It bored me a bit. I thought the story was fairly run of the mill, and I thought the movie could really use some trimming. I didn't think it was bad. It had some really good moments, but I wasn't much looking forward to revisiting the film again for this year's challenge.

Luckily, the DVD comes with a commentary track, so I decided to give that a listen and see if it improved my opinion of the movie. I have to admit that it did. I appreciated hearing about the unusual way in which they raised money for the film and about all the autobiographical elements. I also found it interesting that the director pointed out that the DVD is actually longer than the theatrical cut. I can't remember by how much, something like 15 minutes. Even though some of that footage might be good, I think the movie would have flowed better overall without it.

So, Trevor, give the commentary track a listen. You'll probably enjoy it. I don't see myself adding this one to the collection, but I'm happy I had a chance to revisit the movie and gain a greater appreciation for it through the audio commentary.

Trevor

Thanks clckworang. I don't own the DVD, but will pick it up before next October hopefully.

Crocker Jarmen

This was one of my favorite movies as a kid, I rented it a bunch of times and eventually had my own copy on VHS that I watched over and over. I hate that they put this "directors cut" DVD out. The shorter version of the movie flows much better without all that extra nonsense. It really bums me out that the DVD is now the definitive version of the movie. If this was STAR WARS or ET people would be up in arms.