[yasr_overall_rating]
As a young couple embarks upon their wedding plans, gruesome secrets from their past collide with sinister forces of the present to ensure these newlyweds do not live “happily-ever-after.”
I have seen so many indie movies bury themselves with an overabundance of convoluted and labyrinthine plot twists, that the filmmakers obviously lost track of their story and instead of trying to make a good film, they were too absorbed with wanting to be “The Sixth Sense” all over again and that was the cause of their downfall. A plot twist is only as good as the story it inhabits and if your story is not very believable, then people just won’t care about any surprise elements you throw in. Thankfully, “Something Wicked” steers clear of that conundrum. The movie is being advertised as Brittany Murphy’s final film and that is a shame because she was a fine actress and although she is more of a secondary character here, she performs her scenes with such an incandescent intensity, you find yourself heartbroken that such a young talent was taken away from us much too soon.
When Christine (Shantel VanSanten) and her boyfriend James (John Robinson) announce to her affluent parents that they are planning on getting married and starting a family, they are not very happy, considering that Christine has just been accepted into a prestigious college and the fact that James dropped out of school at an early age. On the way home in a severe thunderstorm, the vehicle, carrying all four passengers, is struck by a train on a railroad crossing and while Christine and James survive with injuries, both of her parents are killed in the crash. Flash forward one year and Christine and James are engaged and undeniably happy. He works at the local mill while she attends college in town.
Gradually, Christine feels that she is being followed and begins seeing her dead parents. Until she graduates college, she is living with her brother Bill (James Patrick Stuart), a cop and his wife Susan (Brittany Murphy), a psychiatrist, and when they find out what’s going on, they think she’s losing her mind. Susan insists that Christine has split personality, a result of the crash and not wanting to accept the deaths of both her parents but as more mysterious incidents begin to occur, including the death of a neighbor, it becomes more and more apparent that some one, or some thing, is indeed following Christine and in order to keep her safe, they all have to put their own lives on the line.
I had heard a lot of negativity about this movie before I saw it and now having seen it, I don’t get the hate. There are worse movies out there and with “Something Wicked,” the filmmakers have created an absorbing and at times, suspenseful thriller, triumphantly keeping the big reveal hidden until the finale. The movie claims to be based on a true story but nearly every film these days makes that assertion and because I am not familiar with the ‘real life events’ the movie is based on, I can only go off of the film itself and for me, overall, it was a dependable and intriguing thriller that kept me guessing till the end.
Available now on DVD
