Courtney Solomon made one of the worst movies I have ever seen, 2000’s abomination Dungeons and Dragons. It is bad on a rarely seen cataclysmic scale. The shot selections were awkward, the handling of the actors was cringe-worthy, the story lightweight but ridiculously stupid, and the special effects were like something a third grade diorama contest could best. Dungeons and Dragons holds my record, in all the many films I’ve seen, as having the worst line readings of all time. Fortunately, the film is one of those so-bad-it’s-hilarious entries to stop it from being an absolute wash. Now six years later Solomon is back with An American Haunting. Normally his name alone attached to a movie would guarantee my avoidance, but I checked this out for you, dear readers. Let’s just say Solomon has a looooooong way to go before he even reaches the competence of Uwe Boll

In 1818 Tennessee, the Bell family moves into a new residence. John Bell (Donald Sutherland) has cheated an outcast woman on her land loan. This woman, branded a “witch,” curses the Bell family. Things are fine for a while, but then young Betsy Bell (Rachel Hurd-Wood) is being attacked by an invisible spirit night after night. Her father and mother, Lucy Bell (Sissy Spacek), are powerless to stop the haunting. Before you can ask, “Why don’t they let their daughter sleep in a different room?” they’ve reached out to a preacher and schoolteacher (James D’Arcy) romantically curious with Betsy. No one can stop this haunting and John Bell searches to gain atonement for his sins to spare his family.

So, let’s get this whole thing straight, spoilers be damned. An American Haunting is marketing itself as a film based on the only medically credited murder to a ghost. Never mind how you verify that, just go with it for a second. This couldn’t be any more wrong. We learn at the end (“learn” wouldn’t be the right word since the film requires voice over to explain itself) that Betsy had been raped by her father. But wait, it gets better. Betsy had subconsciously developed a protector spirit to guard off further molestation and to punish her father. So right there the ghost in An American Haunting isn’t even a ghost, just the angry manifestation of an abused girl. There is one death accredited to the ghost, that of John Bell. However, the movie presents his wife poisoning him, not the ghost. So then the murderous ghost is neither. Plus, one has to wonder how shocking John’s loss is if he was willing to kill himself to lift the curse from his family. How believable is a “true account” of a medically documented haunting death when people were blaming demons for things for ages? I mean, there must be written accords from medical professionals of the day attributing the Black Plague to man’s sins. Just because an official said so centuries in the past does not make it medically sound today. If that were true no one would last through puberty without flogging themselves to death (and I did NOT mean it like that). An American Haunting is not true, is not about a ghost, and isn’t about a ghost committing murder.

Writer/director Solomon has made some strides in his filmmaking, but the results are still laughably the same. He’s gotten a better feel for actors and … that’s about it as far as improvement goes. An American Haunting is a creaky old timey ghost story that couldn’t scare a soul. It feels more attune to a 1970s made-for-TV flick. Solomon cribs all his scare tactics from Spook 101, which means lots of stagy jumps and creaky noises. The most annoying decision Solomon makes is that when he wants to convey the point of view of our ghost, he quickly swoops the camera down and up, spinning around the room like a paper airplane. I’m surprised more ghosts don’t get motion sickness if this is how they roll. You’ll either grab your stomach from the camerawork or the story.

Solomon’s story is just painfully uninteresting. Some good actors do their best to liven up a pretty run-of-the-mill haunting tale. An American Haunting is insufferably boring and lame. The first half is also exceedingly repetitive, as we watch the spirit creep into Betsy’s room and beat the daylights out of her. I don’t know how many times Solomon expects us to still be entertained, let alone scared, by just repeating this scene verbatim. Apparently, if a ghost keeps smacking you it won’t wake up the people sleeping right beside you. I always did wonder. An American Haunting is lackluster and boring, but it’s the arbitrary current day scenes that open and close the film that makes it truly awful. A modern-day mommy discovers Richard’s diary of the haunting and sits herself down for a good read. Then once she gets to the end she sends her little daughter off to spend time with her ex-husband/daughter’s father. And then Betsy’s protector spirit pops up in the car, looking very sad as she’s driven away. An American Haunting is trying to make us connect that the modern-day woman’s husband is molesting her daughter, but the movie expects you to make a lot of jumps to get there. I don’t think “spirit pointing” will hold up in the court of law. And truly, if the Betsy protector spirit was really trying to be helpful, shouldn’t it be less vague and just spell it out? These modern segments feel tacked on and needless if the whole of the film is spent on the 19th century ghost story. An American Haunting requires gobs of text at its conclusion to explain that it was, technically, a ghost story by its new and expanded definition.

The only nod I can give Solomon and his tale is that they cover my number one complaint of all haunted house movies: why the hell don’t the people just leave? Your house is haunted with the spirits of the damned, so you’re just going to wait it out? MOVE people. Find another place to live! An American Haunting features a spirit that can travel outside the bounds of its house and attack carriages, no less.

An American Haunting is marketed as a true-life ghost story, the only in our nation’s history where a murder was credited to a spirit. However, this movie doesn’t have the foggiest idea how to scare an audience beyond stagy high school theatrics. It’s not a ghost story, unless you swallow whole the film’s flimsy recanting of what a ghost is, it doesn’t feature a murder by haunting, and it isn’t even true, unless you can additionally swallow ye olde folksy, biased medical accounts. I’m sorry, but I don’t buy this. This movie isn’t so bad that it’s funny; it’s just boring. People as a whole should steer clear from this dull, amateurish fright flick. The only screams you’ll hear during An American Haunting are unintentional laughter.

Nate’s Grade: D