Haunter
Director: Vincenzo Natali
Starring: Abigail Breslin, Stephen McHattie
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Vincenzo Natali has a go at reshaping haunted-house tropes in this patchwork of Groundhog Day, The Devil’s Backbone and The Others. Little Miss Sunshine’s Abigail Breslin is engaging as Lisa, whose teenage alienation is heightened by being the only member of a family of dead people who realises that they’re deceased. She doesn’t know how they died, but she starts to grasp the truth when contact with a living girl incurs a visit from a sinister telephone repairman, who threatens dark consequences if Lisa continues digging. Unfortunately, the closer the heroine gets to unravelling events, the more head-scratchingly illogical Haunter becomes. The result is an initially entertaining but ultimately frustrating ghost-story-murder-mystery hybrid that fails to live up to the promise of its opening scenes.
* Stephen Applebaum
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