The Upcoming
  • Culture
    • Art
    • Cinema & Tv
      • Movie reviews
      • Film festivals
      • Shows
    • Food & Drinks
      • News & Features
      • Restaurant & bar reviews
      • Interviews & Recipes
    • Literature
    • Music
      • Live music
    • Theatre
  • Fashion & Lifestyle
    • Accessories
    • Beauty
    • News & Features
    • Shopping & Trends
    • Tips & How-tos
    • Fashion weeks
  • What’s On
    • Art exhibitions
    • Theatre shows
  • Tickets
  • Join us
    • Editorial unit
    • Our writers
    • Join the team
    • Join the mailing list
    • Support us
    • Contact us
  • Interviews
  • Competitions
  • Special events
    • Film festivals
      • Berlin
      • Tribeca
      • Sundance London
      • Cannes
      • Locarno
      • Venice
      • London
      • Toronto
    • Fashion weeks
      • London Fashion Week
      • New York Fashion Week
      • Milan Fashion Week
      • Paris Fashion Week
      • Haute Couture
      • London Fashion Week Men’s
  • Facebook

  • Twitter

  • Instagram

  • YouTube

  • RSS

CultureMovie reviews

Lovely Molly

Lovely Molly | Movie review
20 June 2012
Jennifer Atkinson
Avatar
Jennifer Atkinson
20 June 2012

It takes some doing nowadays to provoke a unique reaction from an audience who are otherwise saturated with the horror genre. In every form, horror films have come thick and fast: thrillers and gore-fests, full of suspense and alarm. 

Lovely Molly is a terror-filled combination of all the usual ingredients of a horror film. Brimming with tension right from the start, the audience witness an amalgamation of all things frightening, beginning with an evident attempt at suicide.

The immediate impact of the opening scene is subsequently juxtaposed with film footage of the two main characters, Molly (Gretchen Lodge) and Tim (Johnny Lewis) getting married, something which lulls the audience into a false sense of security.  Next witnessed is the newly married couple beginning their life together in Molly’s forsaken family home, in which the troubles begin.

Written and directed by Eduardo Sánchez, the audience are again treated to the point-of-view horror genre first introduced by Sánchez in The Blair Witch Project (1999).  Since POV was brought into the horror genre, there have been some very successful films employing the technique, not least of which is the Paranormal Activity trilogy. 

Right up in the face of the perceived threat, Molly uses a hand-held recording device to explore the happenings within their marital home. With Tim off at work and with a new exposed knowledge of a dark and distressing past emerging, things go from bad to worse for Molly. 

Exhausting the use of the couple’s centuries-old manor, the tree-filled forest in their garden, intruder alarms and creaky stairs, the jumps are plentiful. 

There is a significant turn-around in the film as more is learnt about Molly’s past. Along with the attempts to help from her sister Hannah (Alexandra Holden) the film climaxes in an unexpected showdown, which continues to incite questions such as who, where, and why?  Is there really something supernatural going on, or is it something else? 

With a rather gruesome interlude, an unexplained and peculiar ending, Lovely Molly seems to fall at the last hurdle.  With suspense replaced with more than a smattering of gore, the film seems to lose its sense of the “unknown”, which was Paranormal Activity’s winning attribute. 

Audiences have had their fair share of cinema gore, even in a comical films such as Shaun of the Dead and you begin to realise that when a film loses its sense of the unidentified, it loses its horror factor and just becomes another gore-fest. 

All that being said, Lovely Molly certainly feels dissimilar to other films of its genre and successfully brings an abundance of suspense in the first half, followed by distinctly aberrant ending, touching on the psychotic. 

★★★★★

Jennifer Atkinson

Lovely Molly is released nationwide on 29th June 2012.

Watch the trailer for Lovely Molly here:

Related Itemsreview

More in Movie reviews

Moxie

★★★★★
Emma Kiely
Read More

Notturno

★★★★★
Mersa Auda
Read More

The Winter Lake

★★★★★
Guy Lambert
Read More

Lucky

★★★★★
Jacob Kennedy
Read More

Justine

★★★★★
Abbie Grundy
Read More

Foster Boy

★★★★★
Jim Compton-Hall
Read More

Crazy About Her

★★★★★
Emma Kiely
Read More

Bigfoot Family

★★★★★
Mersa Auda
Read More

Judas and the Black Messiah

★★★★★
James Humphrey
Read More
Scroll for more
Tap
  • Popular

  • Latest

  • TOP PICKS

  • The Toll
    ★★★★★
    Film festivals
  • Maximo Park – Nature Always Wins
    ★★★★★
    Album review
  • Black Bear
    ★★★★★
    Film festivals
  • Your Honor
    ★★★★★
    sky
  • Spotlight: Lauren Everet and Soup Kitchen London, striving for food security and social equality
    Food & Drinks
  • Introduction (Inteurodeoksyeon)
    ★★★★★
    Berlinale
  • Night Raiders
    ★★★★★
    Berlinale
  • Big vs Small
    ★★★★★
    Film festivals
  • No táxi do Jack (Jack’s Ride): An interview with director Susana Nobre
    Berlinale
  • Social Hygiene (Hygiène sociale)
    ★★★★★
    Berlinale
  • Moxie
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
  • Souad
    ★★★★★
    Berlinale
  • We (Nous)
    ★★★★★
    Berlinale
  • Bicep at Saatchi Gallery Online
    ★★★★★
    Live music
  • The Winter Lake
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
The Upcoming
Pages
  • Contact us
  • Join mailing list
  • Join us
  • Our London food map
  • Our writers
  • Support us
  • What, when, why

Copyright © 2011-2020 FL Media

Azari & III celebrate Converse Gigs’ first birthday at the 100 Club | Live review
Feminism, sex and Strange Hungers: Sadie Hennessy at the WW Gallery | Exhibition review