NationMaster - Encyclopedia: An American Haunting

An American Haunting is a 2006 American horror film written and directed by Courtney Solomon. It stars Donald Sutherland, Sissy Spacek, Rachel Hurd-Wood and James D'Arcy. The film was previewed at the AFI Film Festival on November 5, 2005 and was released in U.S. theaters on May 5, 2006. The film had an earlier release in the U.K. on April 14. The movie was panned by critics[1][2] and audiences[3] and performed poorly at the box office. Image File history File links An_American_Haunting. ... Courtney Solomon (born September 1, 1971) is a Canadian film producer. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Mary Elizabeth Sissy Spacek (born December 25, 1949) is an Academy Award-winning American actress and singer. ... James DArcy is an English actor. ... Hurd-Wood in 2006s An American Haunting. ... Adrian Biddle, (July 20, 1952 â€“ December 7, 2005), was an English cinematographer. ... Freestyle Releasing is an independent film studio founded in 2003, specializing in low budget films. ... is the 125th day of the year (126th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... // Please note that following the tradition of the English language film industry, these are the top grossing films that were first released in the United States and Canada in 2006; because they may have made most of their income in a later year, they may not be the top-grossing... Horror can mean several things: Horror (emotion) Horror fiction Horror film This is a disambiguation page, a list of pages that otherwise might share the same title. ... This article is about motion pictures. ... Courtney Solomon (born September 1, 1971) is a Canadian film producer. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Mary Elizabeth Sissy Spacek (born December 25, 1949) is an Academy Award-winning American actress and singer. ... Hurd-Wood in 2006s An American Haunting. ... James DArcy is an English actor. ... is the 309th day of the year (310th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 125th day of the year (126th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... â€œUKâ€ redirects here. ... is the 104th day of the year (105th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...

The film is based on the novel The Bell Witch: An American Haunting, by Brent Monahan. The events in the novel are based on the legend of The Bell Witch. The film switches from the 19th Century to the 21st Century and features a side story about a recently divorced mother whose daughter is going through something like the same experience as Betsy Bell. This article does not cite any references or sources. ...

Cast

This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Mary Elizabeth Sissy Spacek (born December 25, 1949) is an Academy Award-winning American actress and singer. ... James DArcy is an English actor. ... Hurd-Wood in 2006s An American Haunting. ... Matthew Marsh may be: Matthew Marsh (racing driver) Matthew Marsh (actor) Category: ... Miquel Brown (born circa 1945) is a disco/soul singer from the 70s and 80s most popular for the songs Close to Perfection and the Hi-NRG So Many Men, So Little Time (now considered a gay anthem). ... Vernon Dobtcheff (b. ...

Plot

The movie opens in present times with a young girl having a dream about being chased by something unseen through the forest and into her house. Her mother comes to wake her up and finds an old binder of letters from the 1800s, as well as an old porcelain doll. The letters are from a previous occupant of the house, warning the mother that if she is reading the letters, and noticing supernatural happenings, then the unthinkable has come to pass. The movie then switches to the 1800s, in a village that used to stand around the house, and we hear the story of the Bell Witch. An artists etching of the Bell home, originally published in 1894 The Bell Witch is a ghost story from American Southern Folklore. ...

John Bell is taken to Church court for having stolen a woman's land. The church finds him guilty of charging her too much interest, but let him go because 'the loss of his good name is punishment enough'. The offended woman, who is Kate Batts, infamous in the village over claims of witchery, tells him to enjoy his good health and the health of his family (especially his daughter's) while he can. The whole village thinks the woman's a witch, so John Bell is scared. John Bell is a common name. ... The Bell Witch haunting is the name given to a series of supposedly real events associated with the family of Adams Station, Tennessee (Robertson County) settler John Bell, between 1817 and 1821. ... Witchery is a Swedish thrash metal band, formed by former members of Satanic Slaughter in 1997. ... John Bell is a common name. ...

Soon after that, strange things start happening. John Bell sees a black rabid wolf that keeps disappearing, and his oldest daughter, Betsy Bell, hears noises in her room, like someone's in it. Betsy starts hearing noises more and more often, and had terrible nightmares about a little girl in a red dress, and something evil that always comes into her bedroom after everyone else is asleep. John Bell is a common name. ...

At first everyone thinks they're just nightmares, but then the whole family sees Betsy suspended above the bed by unseen hands, and they watch as something seems to slap her across the face. John Bell thinks that Kate Batts has cursed him. John Bell is a common name. ... The Bell Witch haunting is the name given to a series of supposedly real events associated with the family of Adams Station, Tennessee (Robertson County) settler John Bell, between 1817 and 1821. ...

Betsy starts to look very sick in class, and her schoolteacher, Prof. Richard Powell (who has an interest in her) notices. He learns of what the Bell's have been experiencing, and as an educated man, offers to stay the night at their house to dispel their fears. The haunting gets worse, and chairs, books, and people are blown and pulled around by some entity in the house. As they try to read from the bible to scare it off, the bible is thrown to the ground and the pages are ripped out and thrown into the air. Image File history File links An_american_haunting_rachel. ... Image File history File links An_american_haunting_rachel. ... Hurd-Wood in 2006s An American Haunting. ... This Gutenberg Bible is displayed by the United States Library. ...

Soon the family finds blood on Betsy's dresses in the morning - it appears to be menstrual fluid. The hauntings become more violent, and Betsy is dragged up the stairs and around the house. John Bell begins to get sick, and he starts seeing ghosts as well. The mother begs Prof. Richard to marry her daughter 'to protect her' and to take her away to live with him. He says that although he is smitten with Betsy, he cannot 'in all good conscience' marry her just to protect her. John Bell is a common name. ...

John Bell begins to go insane, and goes to Kate Batts house and asks her to kill him. She holds the pistol to his head, cocks it, and hands it back to him, saying 'I didn't curse you, you cursed yourself'. John Bell stumbles into the forest, falls to his knees, holds the gun to his head, and pulls the trigger. The hammer clicks, but the gun doesn't fire. He re-cocks the gun, and tries again. The gun still won't fire. He realises that the spirit haunting his house won't allow him to kill himself. John Bell is a common name. ... The Bell Witch haunting is the name given to a series of supposedly real events associated with the family of Adams Station, Tennessee (Robertson County) settler John Bell, between 1817 and 1821. ...

There is blood on Betsy's dress again, and John Bell has become even more ill. Betsy finally has a revelation: the attacks she suffers are caused by a being who was born out of her innocence -thus, being herself - and the reason for those was for her to "remember": she needed to remember that the true cause of her pain was that her father has sexually abused her. Lucy, Betsy's mother, is given the same revelation while sitting on the house's porch, as she had witnessed the assault herself. Both had apparently forgotten the incident, not to relive the pain it caused.

John Bell is coughing in bed, and we see a girl's hand pour cough medicine into a spoon and bring it to his mouth. He takes the medicine and begins to choke, and then dies. The girl who gave him the medicine is Betsy, her mother, Lucy, is sitting in a rocking chair watching as Betsy poisons her father. We see Betsy at her father's grave, and hear the narrator say that Betsy was never haunted from that point forward.

The story then zooms back to the current modern time, where the young girl's mother was reading the journal. As she finished reading, her daughter came to her telling that her father (whom was divorced with her mother) had come to take her for a weekend stay with him. Naturally, as a mother, she sent her daughter to her ex-husband who was waiting outside. Entering her house, Betsy's apparition (wearing a white dress which has a blood stain on her crotch) suddenly appeared in front of her and said "How could you?!" in a ghostly voice. The apparition disappeared right away. Shocked for a couple of seconds, the mother suddenly realized that Betsy was trying to warn her that something was amiss between her daughter and her ex-husband.

Instantly, she went out of her house, only to catch a glimpse of her daughter's worried face as they drove away in her father's car. It seems clear that her daughter was fearfully sure that she was in for another sexual harassment by her father.

Inconsistencies with legend

While modern research and even some earlier accounts of the legend seem to suggest that the poltergeist only referred to itself as Kate Batts, as she may have outlived John Bell, there have never been any accounts of Betsy Bell creating the Bell Witch to protect herself. (from German poltern and Geist, noisy ghost, spirit, or embodiment) denotes a spirit or ghost that manifests itself by moving and influencing objects. ...

The film also ignores the tradition that the spirit eventually transitioned from being a poltergeist, a spirit which cannot communicate through speaking, to an unmanifested spirit who spoke to the family often.

The allegations of John Bell's sexual abuse and subsequent death are new additions to the story. The movie adds and subtracts many things from the traditional legend of the Bell Witch. For instance, the movie ends with the idea that Betsy created the Witch to protect herself from her father's abuses; while the traditional legend tells that the family still believed that the witch was Kate Batts. Though it cannot be ruled out because abuse may have been too delicate a topic during the time period, this may have been invented to answer why exactly the poltergeist seemed too warm to other members of the Bell family.

John Bell's actual death in legend has traditionally been the fault of the poltergeist, Kate Batts or otherwise. In the film, a muddled turn of events seem to instead suggest that Betsy is responsible for John's death, and that his wife is complicit in the act.

Critical Reception

The movie was panned by critics[4][5] with the review tallying website rottentomatoes.com reporting that only 12% of critics reviews for the movie were positive. Rotten Tomatoes (http://www. ...

External links

Categories: English-language films | 2000s horror films | 2006 films | American films | Films based on actual events | Films shot in Super 35 | Films set in the 19th century | Supernatural horror films | Films with a pedophile theme | Haunted house films The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is an online database of information about movies, actors, television shows, production crew personnel, and video games. ... MySpace is a social networking website offering an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music, and videos. ...

Contents

Cast GA_googleFillSlot("encyclopedia_square");

Plot

Inconsistencies with legend

Critical Reception

External links

Cast