Product Details

• Actors: Donald Sutherland, Sissy Spacek, Rachel Hurd-Wood, James D'Arcy, Matthew Marsh
• Directors: Courtney Solomon
• Writers: Courtney Solomon, Brent Monahan
• Producers: Alessandro Fracassi, Allan Zeman, Andrei Boncea, André Rouleau, Christopher Milburn
• Format: Color, Dolby, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo), English (Dolby Digital 5.1 EX)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Studio: Lionsgate
• DVD Release Date: October 24, 2006
• Run Time: 91 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (130 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000HC2LFI
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #10,957 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
With its brisk 83-minute running time, An American Haunting is compact enough to be recommended as an occasionally spooky sampling of historical horror. Based on Brent Monahan's novel The Bell Witch: An American Haunting, which in turn was inspired by the only known case (from 1818-20) in which the U.S. government officially acknowledged a death by supernatural forces, writer-director Courtney Solomon's film is a well-crafted 19th-century case study involving Tennessee land-owner John Bell (Donald Sutherland), his worried wife Lucy (Sissy Spacek), and the terrifying abuse of their daughter Betsy (Rachel Hurd-Wood) by a malicious poltergeist. Intensified by excessive sound effects and a nerve-jangling score, these nightly hauntings won't scare anyone who's seen The Exorcist, and they grow increasingly repetitious even as Spacek and Sutherland make the most of their underwritten roles. Solomon (who previously brought Dungeons and Dragons to the big screen) seems more interested in visceral terror than fleshing out the details of this interesting story of dark secrets and child abuse, and his over-used bag of tricks includes time-lapse footage, flashes of negative images, black-and-white (to signal an imminent haunting), and a variety of physical effects designed to keep your adrenaline flowing. It works, to a point (although the present-day framing scenes are completely unnecessary), and An American Haunting makes a good double-feature with The Exorcism of Emily Rose, a far better film with similar subject matter. This good-looking, bleakly moody fright-fest is also noteworthy as the next-to-last screen credit for Adrian Biddle, the esteemed cinematographer of such high-profile hits as Aliens, Thelma & Louise, The Mummy, and V for Vendetta, the latter completed just prior to Biddle's fatal heart attack in December 2005.--Jeff Shannon

Product Description
Based on true events. Between the years 1818-1820, the Bell family of Red River, TN was visited by an unknown presence that haunted the family and eventually ended up causing the death of one of its members. It was not until a manuscript was found in 1998 that the horrifying answer to what caused this was unveiled.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Certainly better than popular opinion would have you believe, but.., July 6, 2006

By	Review Lover "ReviewLover" (At a place...) - See all my reviews

John Bell (Donald Sutherland), convicted of Usury, is plagued by a vengeful poltergeist who seems to focus on his beloved only daughter Betsy. All fingers point to the town witch, of whom Bell has made an enemy, but could the real culprit be someone closer to home?

The Bell Witch legend isn't something I am familiar with, so when I sat down to watch this movie, I saw simply a movie, and not an iterpretation of historical fact. In a sense, I think it's better that I knew nothing about the legend (which is, now that I've read a little about it, extremely interesting) beforehand, since I'm able to judge the movie as a movie in its own right.

And you know what? It's actually not that bad.

Performances, despite the titanic talents of Sutherland and Sissy Spacek as his wife Lucy, manage to be a little mundane - not bad, just not particularly memorable. The dialogue is pretty stop-startish, too: some sentences are so pretentious as to be nauseating, but for the most part, it's not too bad.

Direction and cinematography are hugely effective: Courtney Solomon and Adrian Biddle make a formidable team, and in one hugely important area, "An American Haunting" succeeds where 99% of all modern American horror movies fail miserably: visually, it's very engaging, very stylish and very satisfying to look at. THANKFULLY, special effects are kept to a bare minimum and the fear factor is magnified because of this - the suggestiveness of the visuals creates more fear than the actual onscreen events.

The audio is excellent, too, and it's very refreshing to find a movie that uses sound effects in such a complimentary way.

So with pretty average performances, an extremely interesting premise and some beautiful and accomplished direction and audio-visuals, why does "An American Haunting" only receive three stars? The problem here is the pacing: this is a very short movie (under ninety minutes) and, because of this insane brevity, we can't form much of an attachment to any of the characters. The action comes thick and fast, but when we don't really know the characters of John Bell, Betsy or Lucy, we can't help but not feel much for their misfortunes. Comparable movies of recent years would be "The Sixth Sense" and "The Others" - but the slow pace of those movies, as well as stronger scripting, helped us to form a real attachment to the characters therein - which is definitely a problem with "An American Haunting".

Still, it's a great-looking, great-sounding film that is, in places, very engaging. It's definitely a recommendation for rental, but not for purchase: once is enough, you'd be better off researching the actual legend if you want some powerful scares.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars An American Mess, August 10, 2007

By	TRFB - See all my reviews

Terribly put together, this movie doesn't deliver in any area. The only jumps I experienced was the synchronized music with the hand-out-of-no-where-on-the-shoulder routine. I won't spoil the movie in case you do decide to rent it, just don't buy it. However, I'll tell you why I didn't like it. The direction of the movie was extremely disjointed. Most of the time you are thrown around in flashbacks, and flashforwards, that you get lost. You wonder, "Now, did that just happen? Or is it going to happen? Or is it happening?" When you wonder through the film like that, it's pretty frustrating.

The acting was great. The actors portrayed their characters very well. It's just the story AND the directing and editing.

The end of the story and the real reason why this is all happening to them is such a let down. The bad part is they don't reveal what's happening until the very, very end and by that time you have already wasted 75 minutes of an 80 minute movie!!! What a rip off.

If you like movies about hauntings and how it's linked to a story, I HIGHLY recommend "The Changeling" with George C. Scott. It's an old movie. I think in the 70's or 80's, but, it's a MUCH better film than this one. I recommend you DON'T buy this movie, but if you must see it. See it for free on cable. Don't waste your money.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars It put me to sleep!, August 25, 2007

By	Peggins Thorne (Kasilof,Alaska) - See all my reviews

I usually don't fall asleep during Horror movies but this one bored me to death.After reading The Bell Witch An American Haunting compiled by Brent Monahan,I realize they could have made it really scary.They took some lines verbatim from the book but they left out too much of the truly horrifying.The book put together by Brent Monahan is an old manuscript of the strange events witnessed by Richard Powell,the local school teacher at the time in Adams,Tennessee.Brent Monahan kept this transcript intact with no literary changes.It is exceptionally scary!Hopefully someone will remake the movie.I should have rented this one before I bought it.