Main cast: Amanda Seyfried (Catherine Claire), James Norton (George Claire), Natalia Dyer (Willis Howell), Alex Neustaedter (Eddie Vayle), Rhea Seehorn (Justine Sokolov), Michael O’Keefe (Travis Laughton), Karen Allen (Mare Laughton), Jack Gore (Cole Vayle), F Murray Abraham (Floyd DeBeers), and Emily Dorsch (Ella Vayle)
Directors: Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini
Catherine and George Claire have recently moved into this large farm house with their daughter Franny, to allow George to be closer to his new workplace, a college in which he’d be the new art history teacher. As you can imagine, what with this being a horror film, Catherine sand Franny start encountering weird, inexplicable encounters to suggest that the house may be haunted. It’s always the women that experience weird going-on in such movies, ugh. Then again, George is distracted elsewhere, as he wastes little time starting an affair with Willis, a student.
The lads Eddie and Cole are hired by Catherine to help around the farm, and they seem to know more about the dark history of the place that they let on. Maybe they can clue Catherine in?
Things Heard & Seen is a beautifully made movie, I’d give it that. The lighting is gorgeous, and the scenery is exquisite.Indeed, there are scenes in this film that could have been screen captured to make lovely wallpapers, and it also helps that the cast is an attractive lot.
Unfortunately, this movie is more of a Hallmark drama than horror film, as it spends a lot of time on Catherine’s personal drama. There’s not much suspense here, as it’s quickly apparent that George is an asshole unworthy of everyone’s time and affection, but for a while, the ghostly presence in the house provides some decent, if clichéd, diversion. Seriously, there isn’t anything here that wasn’t done already in past haunted house movies, although I give this movie credit for not abusing jump scares. Then again, maybe the lack of jump scares is due to how this movie isn’t aiming to be a horror film at the end of the day.
I’m not joking. The last act of the movie completely goes off the rails, with the movie turning into one of those morality Hallmark dramas involving psycho husbands and their victimized wives. This act is the reason I have to dock off one oogie from the final score. While I don’t want to go into spoilers, I can say that this act manages to be both cringe-filled corny and over the top dumb. The last scene is easily the most gorgeously shot one in the whole movie, but at the same time, I can’t help thinking, “This movie is effing kidding, right?” That scene is lovely, but so jaw-dropping dumb that I end up thinking that the whole movie is an exercise in killing my brain cells.
Perhaps if the last act had been executed better, this movie would have a better payoff and hence leave a better impression on me. As it is, this one is just a standard evil husband muahaha movie with some ghosts and over the top imagery thrown in for unintentional cringe.
