I mentioned in my review of The Purge that I lost hope in the film at about the 55-minute mark. Well, in the case of The Bell Witch Haunting I lost hope at about the three-minute mark, when a police officer ran away from a severely wounded person lying on the ground. Things continued to go downhill from there, meaning that by about halfway through the film I was actively checking the clock and audibly sighing each time I realised that there was still more film to go through.
The Bell Witch Haunting is, as you would expect, based on the legend of the infamous Bell Witch of Adams, Tennessee that allegedly haunted John Bell and his family in 1817. There have in fact been several films based on this legend; this film is just the latest, and worst, to take on the story. And when I say that, I mean that this is really a bad film, one that can't even keep its own internal continuity right (one character's name changes, they have no idea how long they've even supposed to have been in their new (haunted) house, and impossibly the greatest continuity error ever, an electrician edits his YouTube video after his death).
The plot, such as it is, is that the Sawyer family have just moved into their new home, which happens to be on the lands of John Bell's old property and so comes with its very own witch. Said witch proceeds to start killing people left right and centre, as well as taking the time to occasionally scratch at some doors and play with some table lamps. All of this is captured by the son of the family and his new video camera, as well as the occasional alternate camera from friends and the one and only police officer to apparently work in the Adams, Tennessee area (because he is on the scene for nearly every single event that happens to the family or their friends). At one point he even sets up security cameras to record events around the house - and then no-one ever mentions or looks at those cameras again.
So yes, it's found footage, and more than that it "takes inspiration" from all the big name found footage films of recent years. We get The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity, The Amityville Haunting (Asylum films are now ripping each other off, apparently) and The Last Exorcism at my count. For an added bonus, we even get an Exorcist moment when a possessed character, while a priest is trying to rid her of the Bell Witch, starts vomiting something suspiciously pea soup-like...
As you might have guessed by now, I really did not enjoy this film, and I've got something of a low tolerance for these things sometimes. It's not difficult to make a found footage film now, as the ever-growing number of them prove, but this film fails at even the most basic rules of filmmaking (continuity, plot, connecting event A to act B to conclusion C). The original Bell Witch was said to have eventually poisoned John Bell, and I wish she'd put me out of my misery during this film as well.
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