Harefooted Halloween: Audrey Rose

What I Liked: It’s all competently shot and the performances are fine and actually, I quite like the soundtrack by Michael Small (The Star Chamber, Marathon Man), blah, blah, blah, moving on…

What I Didn’t Like: Everything else.

Overall Impressions: Man, I got a beef with this movie.  The premise involves a guy named Hoover (Anthony Hopkins (Transformers: The Last Knight)) who thinks his dead daughter, Audrey Rose, has been reincarnated into the body of an eleven year old girl named Ivy (Susan Swift).  When he confronts her parents, Janice (Marsha Mason (Nick of Time)) and Bill (John Beck (Thunder in Paradise)), they think he’s crazy and don’t want anything to do with him.  Hoover is not dissuaded though and keeps calling and showing up at their insanely luxurious NYC apartment.  Ivy suddenly has these intense nightmares that she can’t wake from and the only thing that seems to calm her down is Hoover calling her Audrey Rose and cradling her letting her know her father is here to take care of her.

Audrey Rose was killed in a terrible car accident where she was trapped inside in the overturned vehicle and burned alive when she was five.  So Ivy’s freakouts are her running around screaming and clawing at windows.  Her hands even show burn marks during one particular episode.  Bill thinks she touched the hot radiator in the chaos of the scene.  She also stares into the mirror in a daze and says the name “Audrey Rose” over and over (by this point it’s a name she’s heard countless times from the people around her).  In another incident Ivy is at school where they construct an enormous fifteen foot tall snowman and build a circle of fire to melt him (I’ve never heard or seen this type of thing before, is this common?) only to have a possessed Ivy start to crawl into the fire.  Don’t worry, she’s stopped just in time.  All this stuff is supposed to be proof that something supernatural is occurring and that Audrey Rose and Ivy occupy the same vessel.

Janice and Bill argue about what’s going on with Janice going back and forth on being a believer.  Bill thinks Hoover is a kook.  Meanwhile Hoover is obsessed with the notion that his dead daughter is alive in this other girl and will stop at nothing to be with her.  He even resorts to kidnapping which is how we eventually land in the lengthy courtroom drama portion of the film.

Now, even though the movie tries to be coy it's obvious they’re saying that Audrey Rose is indeed sequestered inside Ivy’s body and she manifests herself during sleep.  But to me this all appears to be mental illness.  Everything shown to us can be explained with that reasoning.  What’s maddening is it’s never brought up.  The closest we come is the family doctor recommends Ivy see a therapist.  In my opinion that isn’t enough to tackle her increasingly bizarre and disturbing behavior.  I mean Ivy is injuring herself when she slips into a manic state by banging against windows, knocking over furniture, falling down stairs and reaching for fire.  This is really fucking serious.

Jesus, I wanted to jump into this thing and tell everyone “STOP!  This girl is sick and needs immediate medical attention!  What’s wrong with all of you?!”  Goddammit I hate every character because no one does the right thing.  They all continue to harm this poor girl who’s suffering with Janice possibly being the most damaging culprit.  At one point she admits in open court that she believes Ivy is Hoover’s reincarnated daughter and then two scenes later she tells Ivy no, that’s not true.  The waffling on that is extremely destructive.  Hell, entertaining the very notion to Ivy that she’s in fact another person is dangerous.

The court case may be the worst part.  Hoover’s attorney’s actual for real defense in the kidnapping of a child is that she’s this guy’s deceased daughter so it’s all ok.  It’s an unprovable theory.  How is the jury supposed to receive that?  Then they bring in a hypnotist to put Ivy under to get to the root of the matter which again, how is this allowed?  As an aside, it’s rich that the judge is fine continuing with Hoover’s ludicrous argument but is wary of hypnotism and only reluctantly goes along with it.  Well guess what?  *Spoilers* During the session the doctor performing the procedure is able to bring out Audrey Rose but the process is too much for the girl and she dies.  Fuck!

Despite what you see elsewhere I wouldn’t classify this as a horror movie.  It’s more of a drama thriller.  The film wants it both ways where it definitely believes the supernatural aspect of Audrey Rose being inside Ivy yet doesn’t provide any unquestionable substantiating evidence to back it up.  In my opinion the film doesn’t present as a mysterious curious case like it thinks it does.  Not enough spooky or inexplicable shit happens.  So the whole thing is a frustrating as hell situation.

It is incredibly sad and awful that every single person in Ivy’s life fails her.  Her parents, her teachers, her doctors, the courts, they all not only drop the ball they blow it to smithereens.  This innocent person who is sick through no fault of her own does not get the treatment she deserves.  Nor does she get the protection or respect from the ones most responsible and closest to her, her parents.  Hoover is a sinister sack of shit who never should’ve been able to worm his way into their lives the way he did.  Fuck all these motherfuckers and fuck this movie.

Side note: from Robert Wise, the director of The Sound of Music, West Side Story and Star Trek: The Motion Picture.