This movie stars Abbie Cornish (with possibly the worst American accent I've ever heard) as Jane, a photographer with brain damage that specifically means she is bad at remembering to pick her kid up from school and she spends all her free time (you know, when she's supposed to be picking up her kid) either taking pictures of old houses or staring at the pictures of old houses she's already taken.
Her douchey husband is played by the douchey guy from Blacklist. Actually he's not bad in this, he is just kind of an ass to her, and specifically buys the kid donuts after Mom forbids it, which seems like it sends a bad message to the kid (who, actually isn't that terrible, considering she is a kid in a horror movie).
Rounding out the cast we have horror movie vet Justin Long (he was in Jeepers Creepers and Drag Me To Hell, two of my favorites) playing Jane's doctor and Dermot Mulroney (who is fantastic no matter what) as her uncle she never knew about. I like both of these actors, which is why I was excited to watch the movie, but unfortunately they are barely in it! I am starting this review while I am only halfway into the movie and I am expecting these guys to bite it at any time now, except THEY ARE ALMOST NEVER ON SCREEN so I don't know how they will get a chance to be killed. Over halfway through and they have each been in three two minute scenes.
Okay, so I have a lot of problems with the movie, so I will start out with the things I like about the movie. The music and the cinematography. Done. Whew, glad we got that out of the way. (Really though, the music was creepy and it's very nice to look at.)
My biggest problem with the movie was my fault: I did not realize this was going to be "supernatural" horror. I hate supernatural horror because in most movies, it means "anything can happen and it doesn't matter if it makes sense because GHOSTS." This excused is used rampantly throughout the film - in one scene Jane is lost under a sheet in a barn (I know) and then after a while of digging around she gets out and is suddenly in the middle of the corn field. In another scene, Jane is maybe having a dream where some ghosts are creeping her out so she fights one (it's okay, they are totally cool later), and in it she tries to wake up her husband by shaking him and shouting at him, but of course, he won't wake up, because it's just a dream and it's happening in her head... only it's not a dream, because her daughter remembers the parts of the non-dream that she was present for!
I don't hate ALL ghost movies, but if you are going to have ghosts, you need to have clear rules and you need to stick by them. A good example is The Ring - you have seven days and then the ghost comes out of your TV and kills you. She doesn't pop out of closets throughout the movie (...that I can remember. Actually it's been a while since I've seen this movie so maybe this wasn't the best example. Whatever, I'm too far in now), the movie is just creepy because of the scary situation and the scary atmosphere and the stakes that are clearly presented at the beginning of the movie. In Lavender, we mostly don't have any idea what's going on until the end (I hope - at the time of this writing I'm not actually there yet).
Which is another problem - the whole plot is based on a really shaky premise. At the beginning we see there is some kind of family massacre that left Jane brain damaged enough that she didn't remember having an uncle, and apparently her foster family decided never to tell her about him, nor did they mention her whole family was dead, nor did they tell her she still owned the property the murders occurred on. Okay, that's all well and good, but like... why didn't she google it? There are news articles about everything now. Or why didn't she find the police reports? She never once wondered why she was in foster care? And she was never properly adopted, so it's not like she had the "well I have a new family now" excuse to fall back on, if that is even actually a thing people think. I don't know; I'm not adopted.
At one point in the movie she finds a newspaper article about the murders (the front page was framed in an antique mall... okay) and she skims it, but we don't really get to read any of the article, the cameraman just zooms in on specific words in the article like "murder" and "gruesome" and "crazy". Now, we don't get to read the article, and the person who owns the store says something like she doesn't believe it. Jane reads this and seems to think it means that she, as a 12 year old girl, brutally murdered her whole family... and then went into foster care instead of getting mental help or going to kid prison or something. I don't know, I just feel like if the police really thought this kid just murdered her whole family, there would be some kind of follow-up. Or maybe a cop who used to be on the force that she could discuss it with. Or hell, her uncle, who is deliberately vague when she asks "what happened to my family" and he responds with "oh, sorry, your foster family didn't tell you? Your parents and sister passed in the house. I'm sorry" and Jane asks absolutely no follow up questions like HOW???
There is also some talk about faeries being tricksters, so maybe the ghosts are actually faeries? I don't know. Will update when the movie is over (like 25 minutes left until it is, thank God). (Update: no faeries.)
Okay, so once everything is revealed, it all pieces together decently, and fixes a couple of problems I had with the movie. I still think it would have been better served if they had nixed the ghost aspect and just left it all as her bad memories trying to work their way out (the movie kind of tries to do this in the end, but there are still things left unexplained, like doors slamming and locking out of nowhere, which her family also witnessed so it definitely happened, and more than once). Oh, and I almost forgot, the little girl clearly sees the ghosts and references them in a few scenes, so what the hell? So there are DEFINITELY ghosts, despite what the retcon at the end is trying to get you to believe. Also in one scene the kid tells Daddy that the ghosts are saying Mommy's going to hurt her - they aren't entirely wrong, she does almost throttle the kid a couple of times, but that kind of came out of nowhere and isn't mentioned again and seems like it's only in there so we think the mom is dangerous. But it's okay because this is before they try to pretend there were never any ghosts? If that is what they are saying?! Get it straight, screenwriters!
And on the subject of ghosts, there are WAY too many ghost chase scenes - you know what I mean, when someone sees what is clearly a ghost and chases it, instead of just pretending like they don't see anything, which is what I would do if this happened to me in real life.
Bottom line: not the worst movie ever. It could have been a little faster paced, could have cut it with some of the ghost stuff, but overall I don't regret having seen it, I guess. If you are interested in watching for Justin Long or Dermot Mulroney, don't bother, they are barely in it (though they are good in what little bit of it they are in - Justin Long in particular is clearly giving it his all in a scene towards the end - you know, for the thirty seconds or so he is on screen). If you like kind of boring, run of the mill - I want to call this a thriller, but I don't know if that's the right word because I wouldn't call this thrilling - let's try again. If you like boring supernatural drama movies with decent acting, you will probably like this. Overall I'd say this was "meh".
EDIT: Okay, so I was writing the review as I was watching the movie (clearly) and I figured I could finish up after the big reveal since I figured I knew everything I needed to know at that point. There was still ten minutes left at that point, and I spoke too soon. The ending got really weird in a kind of nonsensical way, but at least they settled it: the ghosts were real.
New bottom line: I think the writer(s?) weren't sure if they should make them real ghosts or just memories in Jane's head trying to get out. They should have axed the ghost stuff and picked memories, instead they decided "we'll just say it's both, that way everything is explained." It was... an interesting choice, but I don't think it really paid off. I think this movie would feel right at home during a supernatural movie marathon on some rainy Sunday afternoon on Lifetime Movie Network. Also the two things I liked (music and cinematography) got a little grating towards the end. Also, there were way too many red herrings.
I would not watch this again, and I am a little disappointed that Netflix thought this was 98% my kind of movie. I thought you knew me better than that, boo.
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