Haunting at the Beacon DVD Movie Review
Haunting at the Beacon DVD Movie Review
Directed by Michael Stokes, starring Teri Polo, Elaine Hendrix, Michael Ironside and Ken Howard.
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Best thing to do after your young son disappeared mysteriously and then you went to a mental hospital? Move into a creaky, old, falling-apart haunted apartment!
Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time to Bryn (Teri Polo) and her husband Paul (David Rees Snell). But before very long, the change of scenery only adds to their grief when Bryn starts "seeing things" and her husband starts "seeing someone". Oh, the drama! There's more angst than apparition in Haunting at the Beacon, and mostly that's OK. It's handled in a fairly light manner which brings to mind some of the vaguely chilling TV movies of the week from the 1970s.
Side stories include Bryn's hot to trot younger sister Christina (Marnette Patterson), Beacon handyman Mr. Butters (Everette Sifuentes) and tenant Vanessa (Elaine Hendrix) who share an odd dynamic, and two cops on the case, played by character actors Michael Ironside and Ken Howard.
There isn't a whole lot that can be said about the story, even though it is extremely plot heavy (too much so, for what it is… but it's not boring). It's basically a Japanese ghost story (The Ring, Dark Water) wrapped up inside an American apartment building (a very pretty art deco Old Hollywood style one, at that). The acting is good across the board, but the real standout is Hendrix. I recall going to the trouble of looking her up after her seeing her arresting performances on series' Castle and The Mentalist in the past year or so. She's really got that "something" about her; it's kind of surprising she is not a bigger star, but she's got a solid career and has quite a few projects upcoming and in the works.
Haunting at the Beacon is reasonably well-paced, though it does sag here and there. The ghostly moments are well-done and the practical effects, while a tad clunky, are a good call considering the budget and the setting — they lend themselves to the (what I imagine is) unintended spooky-seventies MOW look and feel. It all works.
Now this is not to say Haunting at the Beacon is any better than, say, Room 6 or a half-dozen other 'missing kid direct to disc ghost' movies out there, but if you are looking for something you haven't seen and you like the actors (remember Polo from Meet the Parents?), then you could do a lot worse in the current influx of duct-taped, crying victims of home-invasion murder.
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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson