THE HAUNTING OF SARAH HARDY
Nothing we haven't seen before
How can you tell that this is a made-for-TV movie? It stars Sela Ward and Morgan Fairchild.
This is a fairly by-the-numbers flick. A woman moves back into the home where she grew up (and watched her mad mother kill herself), and starts to have visions of a ghostly, feminine presence. Is she going insane, or is somebody trying to DRIVE her insane? (hint: like I said, it has Morgan Fairchild)
And thus things go on dutifully for about an hour, Sela Ward looking so much like an ex-girlfriend of mine that she popped up in my dreams later that night and explained to me just what the hell was wrong with her. Of course, by the time I woke up, I had forgotten, but for a while, it was a mystery solved.
Things get nice n' loopy in the last half hour, but still, everything remains very predictable. Even the twists and turns can be seen from a ways off. The only one that I didn't see was in the film's final frames - that is, in a certain character's failure to pop up on the scene just when you'd expect him to. And that, curiously, was more satisfying than disappointing.
Acting's fine, and it's well made, but there's nothing too special here, and nothing we haven't seen done before, and done better.