A very strange story in this film. A story that does not look like Stephen King's traditional stories. Many things are different from what he has ever produced. Strangely enough it comes after the film "Rose Red" that is posterior in story time. This story is thus a prequel to the previously shot one. The element that is typically Kingian is the haunted house with some connection to Indians behind. But that is all. The story itself is some kind of distorted and warped "Gone with the Wind" in a setting that looks like and sounds like a Victorian house from England's 19th century, the Bronte Sisters maybe. The main character, Ellen Rimbauer herself is more like one of these feminine characters from this English literary period. Little to do with Stephen King's social approach and even historical time. There is even a vodun dimension that is more typical of Anne Rice's witches, especially the last volumes of the vampire series when the witches join the vampires in some kind of old central American chase. Yet the film is outstanding and mesmerizing in its slow rhythm and its slow building of the terror that is attached to the man of the house, to the man that has to be eliminated. But we know better, since we know the sequel that came before the prequel. It is the house that is twisted and warped and not the man who just used the house to get rid of his mistresses and then later of his own children. The question that is not answered though is why the house accepted to be the servant of that man, and what's more why the house accepted to be the justice-bringer, the executioner of the demand for vengeance and retribution from the wife. Can we interpret that as the taking over of the house by the wife and her African servant and confident? I am not sure. It is not all that clear. What's more there are so many corners in the house that are not on the blue print that we would like to know how all that is possible. Did the house build itself, or grow inside the structure that was given to it, as it is suggested at the end? Maybe. But that is original for Stephen King. In "The Shining" the evil Indian spirit is living in the hotel but the hotel is not growing. In "Salem's Lot" the vampire takes over the house that welcomes him because of the crime it hosted some time before, but once again the house itself does not grow. There are several other haunted houses in King but never a house that has the power of growing, even if the Dark Tower could be seen as such, though it is not and it is only the character that is growing through mythical and maybe mystical time as he is going up the tower. The magic comes from somewhere else, not the building itself. And in this case the evil that haunts the house is not very clear, clearly identified. Indian, Irish hence Celtic, or whatever, it is not clear at all. Some elements are not used enough or made explicit enough, like the malformation of the daughter's right arm, and her pushing the little pram around with her doll in it, a Vodun doll? Yet the film is effective in its suspense and dense atmosphere.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines