We're told that some old lady has died. Then we meet her daughter's family. The woman who is a mess and makes dollhouses, the husband who of course is irrelevant in the family, and their two fugly kids who couldn't look more different from each other and their parents: some dumb good for nothing dopehead and some little girl that has some issues. For no good reason the woman asks dopehead to take little girl with him to a party where he smokes dope and the girl eats candy with nuts to which she is allergic to causing her to have an anaphylactic shock. Dummy races to drive her to a hospital and while the girl has her head out the window trying to breathe he swerves out of traffic decapitating the girl against a light post.
Now of course the woman is an even greater mess. At her usual help group she meets a woman who offers to do a seance to get the dead girl to talk. Sure enough stuff happens during the seances. She finds the girl's notebook that has a bunch of scary scribbles against her dad. When the woman throws the book into the fire, her husband ends up burning up. Meanwhile, the seance lady is screaming weird stuff at dummy. When he comes home and finds all this he runs into the attic to see his mom hanging from the ceiling try to cut her own head off. He then goes into the tree house where he finds a couple of surprises.
All this sounds pretty good. Problem is that the whole thing is drawn out unnecessarily to 2 long hours. Things only get going during the last half hour. In the meantime we're punished by the camera that won't stop giving us pointless closeups of the repugnant dopehead's face. There's something to be said about the direction, the style, the music that make this whole affair tolerable, but again, nothing is gained by the excess in runtime. Ari seems to think that every single minute of his work is worthwhile. No it's not. They could have easily cut out 30-40 minutes of this and ended up with a better movie. I did appreciate though the backstory that in reality should have been more the focus and deserved more attention.
Now of course the woman is an even greater mess. At her usual help group she meets a woman who offers to do a seance to get the dead girl to talk. Sure enough stuff happens during the seances. She finds the girl's notebook that has a bunch of scary scribbles against her dad. When the woman throws the book into the fire, her husband ends up burning up. Meanwhile, the seance lady is screaming weird stuff at dummy. When he comes home and finds all this he runs into the attic to see his mom hanging from the ceiling try to cut her own head off. He then goes into the tree house where he finds a couple of surprises.
All this sounds pretty good. Problem is that the whole thing is drawn out unnecessarily to 2 long hours. Things only get going during the last half hour. In the meantime we're punished by the camera that won't stop giving us pointless closeups of the repugnant dopehead's face. There's something to be said about the direction, the style, the music that make this whole affair tolerable, but again, nothing is gained by the excess in runtime. Ari seems to think that every single minute of his work is worthwhile. No it's not. They could have easily cut out 30-40 minutes of this and ended up with a better movie. I did appreciate though the backstory that in reality should have been more the focus and deserved more attention.