Movie Reviews: Filth and Wisdom, The Haunting of Molly Hartley, Splinter

THE HAUNTING OF MOLLY HARTLEY  From Freestyle Releasing, the self-service distributor that brought you D-War and In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, comes a movie even worse than those two combined. It really makes things tough on those of us who try our damnedest to defend horror as a legitimate, meritorious genre when crap like this gets churned out on Halloween, but perhaps this critic’s sacrifice of time and money will not be in vain if everyone reading avoids The Haunting of Molly Hartley like vegetable sticks in a trick-or-treat bag. In the vein of the antiseptic, CW-kid-starring pseudo-horror that we all thought got left behind along with the rest of the ‘90s, Molly Hartley stars 20-year-old Haley Bennett as the titular 17-year-old, a prep-school girl whose “haunting” consists of flashbacks to the time when her now-committed mother tried to kill her with a pair of scissors. Why? Well, you’ll have to wait until the end of this tedious, scareless slog to find out, but suffice it to say that Satan is involved. Too bad Ol’ Scratch doesn’t actually show up; that might have made for at least one visually interesting shot. Producer-turned-director Mickey Liddell (Everwood) evinces no talent whatsoever in his new role; he too seems to have sold his soul for this opportunity, and gotten shortchanged on the deal. (Citywide) (Luke Y. Thompson)

INTERNAL BEHAVIORS Expecting a slickly cheesy teen schlock-horror flick capitalizing on the Halloween spook factor, viewers might at first find the low-budget aesthetic of Mark Schaefer’s DIY debut refreshing. But benefit of the doubt soon gives way to musings about how the hell such drivel as Internal Behaviors ever found its way to theatrical release. It plays like a student filmmaker’s graduate project, encompassing all the unintentional horror that designation implies: bad acting, rhythmless editing, risible green-screen effects and white-noisy sound mix. Just as inept are the story and screenplay: After getting busted for spit-balling a teacher, Jack (Brandon Shealy) and Johnny (Chris Andres) avoid the principal’s office and while away the afternoon wandering downtown Los Angeles instead. One 360-degree rooftop pan and requisite “I’m king of the world!” joke later, the boys embark upon a series of shenanigans, which end in bloody disaster. Only the nightgown-wearing Asian girl with space-bun hairdo conveys a glimmer of the batty atmosphere Schaefer seems to be after. With its martial arts and faux gangsta sequences, Internal Behaviors aspires to low-brow cult status, but this amateur effort seems destined for regular replay only at Schaefer’s own house parties. (Grande 4-Plex) (Kristi Mitsuda)

Marie Caillou

Fear(s) of the Dark

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JUST BURIED More twee than any movie about serial murder has a right to be, writer-director Chaz Thorne’s grisly farce ladles a quirky-cute score over its dirty deeds in place of a point of view. Jay Baruchel — who all but vanished into the jungle foliage as Tropic Thunder’s top bananas munched the scenery — makes a bit more of an impression here as a nosebleed-prone mope who inherits his dad’s failing small-town funeral home along with its pretty formaldehyde jockey (Rose Byrne). After an auto mishap delivers their first customer in years, the two start to see their enemies as just the stimulus package their business needs. Attempting an arch, black-comic amusement closer in spirit to Little Shop of Horrors or Kind Hearts and Coronets than Fargo, the movie serves up gory killings and kinky peripheral shenanigans without any satirical thrust. But the cast’s woozy timing and the oddball characters provide some sour laughs before the movie’s many caskets fill. (Sunset 5) (Jim Ridley)

GO LITTLE BIG TOP Bobcat Goldthwait’s directorial debut Shakes the Clown was infamously dubbed “the Citizen Kane of alcoholic clown movies”; this makes Little Big Top, at the very least, the Rocky Balboa of such. Sid Haig, most famous for playing a homicidal boozing clown in Rob Zombie movies, here explores the more poignant side of greasepaint and liquor, as third-generation circus star Seymour Smiles, now a washed-up bum squatting in the condemned ruins of his family home in Peru, Indiana (“the circus capital of the world”), where he regularly passes out on cheap beer. A shot at redemption comes in the form of jocular local showman Bob (Richard Riehle), who wants the barely living legend to whip his team of amateur clowns into shape. What ensues is simultaneously an oddball parody of teacher-movie clichés, and a long-overdue dramatic showcase for Haig, which probably won’t get him the acclaim it should because, well, he’s a horror/cult star playing a sad clown. Riehle (Office Space, Smiley Face) also manages to get at the humanity beneath his usual goofball persona. Just one complaint, and it is a significant one: We never actually see the improved clowning routines, which makes Little Big Top feel like a sports movie that fades out before the big game. Perhaps that’s the joke, but at least when your star has the goods, it’s still fun to watch him in training. (Sunset 5) (Luke Y. Thompson)