THE LADY IN WHITE
A very good modern ghost story
I've heard nothing but universal praise for this movie, so I was expecting big things. It's the wrong thing to expect - it's not a big movie. It's a quiet little one, and works best when it remembers just what it is.
Lukas Haas - a very good child actor who's had a dreadful time finding good roles as an adult - stars as young Frankie Scarlatti, a kid in 1962 Willowpoint Falls who lives with his father, his brother, and his grandparents. For thirty minutes, his life in Willowpoint falls is presented as pretty idyllic, although there's little things that hint at some unpleasantness underneath - hints of racism, family strife, and the kind of loneliness only understood by those whose only friends treat them like shit. But for those thirty minutes, Lady In White looks like a cute - and rather endearing - comedy.
Then things get a little darker. Frankie is tricked into sneaking into the school cloakroom, and his "friends" lock him in there overnight. What he sees in there, I wouldn't really want to give away - but it does introduce ghosts, murder, and a nasty revelation of the town's recent history that Frankie's father has obviously done a good job of shielding his son from.
This one's written and directed by Frank LaLoggia, who gave us the intriguing Fear No Evil, which as I've said before, I watched in a state of fugue and probably know nothing about even after having watched it. LaLoggia mostly does a good job here, but the film clearly shows that he either lacks confidence as a director, or faith in his audience to figure things out for themselves.
The music is one problem - it just never stops, and it's not very good. It's also composed by LaLoggia.
A more serious problem is the voice-overs. The film is narrated by an adult Frankie (voiced by - surprise! - LaLoggia), and there's not one thing that the voiceovers say that tell us anything that matters, or tell us anything that couldn't have been easily shown to us instead. This is worse than the Blade Runner voice-overs.
The FX are terrible, too.
But as much as I bitch, this is overall a strong film withan excellent performance by Haas at its center and a great, involving story - something we usually don't see much of in horror movies, do we?