random movie review: The Forlorned

Dad and I used to joke about one aspect of living in a haunted house that movies always, always overlook: Beyond the fear, living in a haunted house would be annoying as hell. Think about all the cliches of such movies: slamming doors, unexplained voices, appliances turning on by themselves, etc. The movies treat such phenomena as scary, and they would be, but after a while, it would be like, "the dishes have moved by themselves when I wasn't looking again, damn, I just put them away!"

The makers of The Forlorned -- an independent film, with a cast of unknowns and an obviously low budget -- are the first to understand just how frustrating living in a haunted house would be. As a horror film, it's just competent enough to hold your interest, nothing more. But as a comedy, it gets a lot of mileage out of the skilled performance of Colton Christensen as Thomas Doherty, the young man who moves into the house. Sadly, I predict that Christensen will never become famous, but that's more due to how the film industry works than any lack of talent. Christensen's facial expressions -- believable and honest as the best actors in Hollywood -- tell more with a single look than some actors need a page of dialogue to express.

In the movie, Tom Doherty has accepted the job of caretaker of a lighthouse and the nearby caretaker's house on a deserted island off the coast of a small town somewhere in New England. Counting the living quarters in the lighthouse itself, that gives Tom the choice of two buildings to live in, rent-free, on the condition that he devote pretty much all of his time to fixing the buildings up, single-handedly.

The first scene beautifully sets up the dual tone of the movie. It's a scene that's been used in countless horror films of the past: The grizzled old townsman insists he doesn't believe in ghosts but repeatedly adds variations of "but then again . . ."

He then tells Tom the history of the property, and, of course, it's a history rife with death, starting with a battle in the War of 1812 right off the coast, when the island was used as the burial ground for those killed in combat. After that, residents of the property have died from heart attack, murder, and suicide. The previous caretaker "died in that chair right there!" the old man helpfully tells the increasingly creeped-out Tom. Other island residents have disappeared or gone insane, and now the townspeople avoid the island out of a superstitious dread.

All of this is pretty par for the course for haunted house movies, but the capper is when, after he has told Tom this long litany of loss, tragedy, madness, and murder, and emphasizes that Tom will be the only person living on the entire island, the old man ends his speech with a light-hearted "well, guess I better be going!" and Tom gives him a hilariously terrified, wholly believable look like, "you have got to be kidding me!"

What follows isn't very distinguished as horror -- all the cliches are present, done decently, no better, no worse -- but for my wife and me, what worked great was the comedy of watching Tom grow increasingly frustrated by the countless inconveniences that come with living in a haunted house. It gradually becomes clear that the previous residents who went mad probably didn't do so out of fear, but out of frustration.

The key to this aspect of the film working so well is Christensen's performance as Tom. He never over-reacts, but his eyes are indeed very expressive, and he's not afraid to play his character's growing fear and frustration for laughs.

The Forlorned is not a great movie by any means -- at times it's creepy, but at other times, the low budget does negatively impact the effectiveness of the scenes intended to be scary -- but as a source of unexpected (intentional) comedy, it really is quite enjoyable.