Bad Touch

I had never heard of the movie The Entity. I was at a friend's house, borrowing a couple of DVDs, and in my browsing of some other movie entirely, she says basically, "oh, that reminds me of this movie here, The Entity! You should watch this."

She went on to describe in a nutshell what the movie was about: "a woman gets raped by a ghost." I can't say I felt convinced to watch the movie. But somehow, I walked out the door with a handful of movies I wanted to see... and The Entity.

Here's the thing. That nutshell description is really about all the explanation this movie requires. It's basically all that's going on. And there's no tiptoeing up to the subject matter, either. Six minutes into the movie, and Barbara Hershey is being raped by a ghost... for the first of many times, more than I cared to count, in the film.

And so, six minutes into the movie, we basically arrived at the first problem with it. Not to be too crass, but this movie needed a little "foreplay." I think there was some suspense to build up here, some sense of foreboding, a small taste of the supernatural before things kick into high gear. This ghost doesn't waste any time moving objects or making eerie noises, though... just BOOM.

This movie is based on a book that in turn claims to be based on a true story. Regardless of facts, I have to say that a book would be a vastly better medium for this story. Film just can't make this work; at least early 1980s film sure can't. A book could find the words to tell us what it would be like to be a helpless victim in this situation, to put us there in the moment. A movie must try to show us, and "attacked by something invisible" is a near-impossible thing to make convincing. Special effects wizard Stan Winston serves up a rather cool and convincing "invisible fingers squeezing flesh" gag, but ultimately it falls on poor actress Barbara Hershey to thrash around and sell this attack as real.

Well, she tries her best. She acts the hell out of it. But every other element of the film works against her. There are ineffective camera angles. The sequences run awkwardly long. (And while I praised the "invisible fingers" effect, I should elaborate by saying every other special or visual effect in the movie is just awful.)

And oh God, the music. This is one of the worst musical scores I've ever heard in a film. It's loud and too on the nose; it basically sounds like a symphony written for "headboard." It's so preposterous that Quentin Tarantino actually lifted this music to use for a scene in Inglourious Basterds, to scream "over the top!!"

The sum total of it all is that even though you're watching something truly horrifying if you could suspend your disbelief, you almost can't help but laugh. It comes off incredibly amateur, or at best, like a movie composed by an accomplished director deliberately trying to look amateur. (Refer back to some of the moments in Inglourious Basterds.)

Basically, I tip my hat to Barbara Hershey. I even give a polite nod to Ron Silver, who has to give his all to make credible a therapist character who remains an obstinate disbeliever beyond the point of reason. Their considerable talents were utterly wasted here. I give The Entity a D.