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by Thomas M. Sipos,
managing editor [February 19, 2021]
[HollywoodInvestigator.com]
Twenty years ago,
The Sixth Sense,
The Ring, and
The Grudge revitalized the ghost film, redefining it with new
tropes and visuals. Until then, with rare exceptions, ghosts were
diaphanous spirits that did little other than scare people. In the
2000s, they turned gruesome and violent.
But since then, and apart from a few original gems like Insidious,
ghost films have mostly just sleep-walked through the motions,
repeating scenes from the past twenty years.
The Parish is one of these
somnolent efforts, well made but unoriginal. Its cinematography,
sound, and visual effects are slickly professional. But the story
is nothing we haven't seen many
times before. There are no surprises. Worse, the attempts at
scares are tepid.
Liz (Angela DiMarco, who I liked much better in
The Last Laugh) is a single
mother who moves into a new house, in a new town, with her
daughter, Audrey (Sanae Loutsis). Why Liz moved "a thousand
miles" from San Diego to small town Washington is never made
clear. Yeah, her husband died, but why move?
Naturally, Audrey hates the house, hates the town, hates her
school. Mother and daughter squabble, though there is much love.
Sound familiar?
Audrey befriends a new boy at school, Caleb (Lucas Oktay). Horror
fans will quickly guess that Caleb is a ghost. Shyamalan cleverly
hid that Bruce Willis was a ghost in
The Sixth Sense, but
The Parish doesn't even try
to hide it. When Liz can't find Caleb in the school basement,
early in the film, we can guess why. Later, when Liz tells a
teacher that Audrey is outside talking to Caleb, and the teacher
says that Audrey is alone, we are not surprised.
The villain of The Parish is
Sister Beatrice's ghost (Gin Hammond), but she barely has any
screen time. She's seen a few times from a distance, but doesn't
really enter the film until the
last ten minutes. Father Felix (Bill Oberst Jr.) engages in
a hurried exorcism. Sister Beatrice retaliates with a few
well-crafted but unoriginal visual effects -- and then poof!
-- she is gone.
I think Sister Beatrice's ghost is supposed to be a metaphor for
Liz's own personal demons -- her grief over losing her husband,
her guilt over uprooting her daughter from her home town. Father
Felix often tells Liz about the need to work through our grief,
that it can't be suppressed. Father Felix ends the film with a
similar speech, as he gifts Liz the crucifix he used to exorcise
Sister Beatrice.
The Parish spends way too much
time on these domestic issues at the expense of creating any
horror. Too much context, too little payoff.
At 81 minutes, The Parish is a
short feature, but it felt much longer. Like a mediocre film that
you've seen before. You know what's going to happen, you aren't
especially excited to see it again, but there's not much else to
do right now.
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