Lovely Molly is a movie about a recovering drug addict who has the worst support system, including doctors, in the whole universe. That pretty much sums it up accurately, I think. I was prepared for a really great, underrated horror film judging by the reviews that Dreadit consistently seems to give it, but I ended up just… thoroughly disappointed. That said, newcomer Gretchen Lodge was fantastic. It is directed by the director of The Blair Witch Project, which is part of the reason I wanted so badly to watch it.
The movie starts off innocuously enough, but quickly catapults into, I guess, what Sanchez wanted to be a slow-burning thriller? It’s definitely slow. This woman, Molly (who doesn’t turn out to be very lovely after all), and her new husband, Tim, move into Molly’s deceased parents’ house. It is revealed pretty much immediately that something happened in her childhood that was traumatic and it happened in that house, which led me to ask, in the first 15 minutes, if something so terrible happened to her, why did she move willingly back into said house? It is also revealed very soon into the film that she is a recovering drug addict (heroin)… which again led me to ask, why is her family letting her move into a house where traumatic events occurred? So many questions to which you never really receive an answer, except for “her family is really bad at supporting her in her recovery.”
The film is disturbing, with a few scenes going straight for shock factor. I don’t want to spoil anything, but there is gore, there is sexual content, and there are dead animals. That said, this movie was not scary… I know I don’t really get scared by films much anymore, but that said, it’s just not a scary movie. It’s gross… it’s disturbing… it’s more or less a look at repressing memories and one girl’s descent into pure madness. And all throughout, her sister and her newlywed husband go about enabling her – her sister literally comes over and brings pot to smoke with her! Her husband takes her to the doctor’s and the doctor says, “Well, she’s fine physically…” and prescribes her some sleeping pills. When her husband asks, “What if she becomes dangerous?” it is implied that nothing is really said and no solution is offered.
It is a very strange film because it is filmed in an almost found-footage style, but it is not (for the most part) found-footage. There is an excess of shaky cam and POV shots and it’s pretty much Blair Witch but a different story. The characters are illogical and largely unlikeable. The use of “subtle” squealing noises to make you feel uneasy almost gave me vertigo at some points in the movie.
Overall, it was just a highly detestable experience and honestly, I probably won’t ever watch it again.
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