Deadline (2009) 4/10

Starring : Brittany Murphy, Thora Birch, Tammy Blanchard, Marc Blucas
Director : Sean McConville
Running Time : 82 mins

Alice Evans (Murphy) is a writer, working on a screenplay, who is recovering from a breakdown. In an attempt to get writing again, she takes up residence in an old house in the middle of nowhere in the hope of getting some peace, quiet, and inspiration, but when she finds a box filled with some old video camera tape she starts to become intrigued by the couple featured in the tapes.

It’s almost as if someone sat down and watched The Shining and decided they could make a movie that didn’t make much sense too. It’s never really explained why the ghost is haunting Murphy or what the relevance is between her haunting and her mental breakdown, other than to cast doubt on whether or not the ghost is real. The watching of the videos was a bit weird – I guess she was watching them to get ideas for her screenplay, as is made evident at the end – but I’m still not sure if the husband was a ghost or not, the film seems to make out he wasn’t dead, even after the hanging scene, and how did Murphy recognise him when he was never shown on the camera?

You’ll like this if you liked : The Uninvited