Horror movies usually have a basic formula they go by. There is a killer who people run from, blood, death and token female character — we all know how horror movies typically go.
“The Possession of Hannah Grace” followed this exact formula and was a phenomenal movie, but left some loopholes that disappointed me as a horror movie fanatic.
Lindsay Trombly | Argonaut
The film is about an ex-police officer, Megan, played by “Pretty Little Liars” star Shay Mitchell, who had a dramatic experience with her partner in the force. He was shot and killed in front of her, while she just froze. The tragic event led her to abusing prescription drugs.
While she is recovering, her sponsor Lisa, played by Stana Katic — most known her role as Beckett in the show “Castle” — gets her a job at the hospital morgue checking in dead bodies.
Working in a morgue sounds like the worst job in the world if you can’t handle dead bodies, but Megan is able to stick it out. However, one body arrives still alive — Hannah Grace.
Grace originally has brown eyes, but shows up with blue. She is dead, but the thing possessing her body isn’t.
Watching this film in a theatre gave the perfect horror movie vibe because the air conditioning was going crazy. I was freezing and felt like I was actually in the morgue with Megan.
The film’s atmosphere and setting does a great job on the suspense scale, with dark hallways around every corner when Megan has to get from one place to another. Coupled with the eerie morgue, which has this maze-like quality to it, leaving the audience with the feeling the character could lose her way fairly easily.
There were quite a few parts where I jumped while the possessed Grace wandered the halls. But the best part of the film was the sound effects, as her bones cracked and her body contorted in unusual ways, which made the film freaky and live up to my horror movie standards.
I loved this movie and highly recommend people watch it, but they need to realize it has its flaws.
Every time Grace left the morgue tray, she would somehow end up back in the same spot seconds after she got to one of her victims. This happened multiple times during the film and the whole story line started to become unbelievable.
There were also some jumpy segments of Megan being in one place of the hospital to another without seeing how she got there, which messed with my brain too much. I would have preferred to see how she got to her destination in the first place.
Lastly, I wished the movie ended sooner than it did. The ending to the film did not move the plot forward and could have been left out completely.
“The Possession of Hannah Grace” has its flaws, but so did “The Exorcist” in 1973 — who spits out gross green vomit?
Lindsay Trombly can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @ lindsay_trombly