An Almost Haunting At The Seacliff Inn

Tonight I was all settled down to watch an awesome tape I had in the closet called “True Blood” the front cover had a whole bunch of that floating head bullshit but it had Billy Drago, Jeff Fahey AND Sherilyn Fenn. There were car explosions everywhere and gang fights and glamour shots of Jeff Fahey and I was so damn excited to watch something kick ass after a couple of duds I’ve been subjected to lately. My husband put the tape in- it didn’t work, on closer inspection it appeared to be what experts call “completely fucked”. So I let out a great sigh and went with my second choice “The Haunting of Seacliff Inn” with Ally Sheedy.

My husband replied with “PG Tiff? Really?” he had already agreed to sit down and watch it with me so he was stuck at this point. The commentary was an accurate depiction of our enthusiasm and it didn’t stop there. 

The cover is actually pretty awesome and somewhat reminiscent of a Stephen King Novel with the jaws of an animal, a wolf presumably hovering ominously over a mansion in a dark setting.  The tag line reads “A new home, a new start but what secret terror lurks within?” well it can’t be much because as we scan our eyes to the bottom of the page it reads “PG for low level violence and sexual references” well if we can’t get some violence we might at least see some sexiness. I start to doubt this possibility as I stare at the back cover at an extreme close up of Ally Sheedy. 

The video is in very good condition which is what I expected from a tape that’s probably been watched a total of three or four times. The trailers start and my husband Jake started to groan, 

G rated: The little Rascals, “my hope of anything scary happening in the next one hundred minutes has just been smashed” –Jake.

G rated: Lassie, The dog who peed on our carpet and our hearts, “did Lassie ever do anything other than just bark?” apparently she jumped off roofs a lot. 

To the movie now, we start with pleasant music driving through the countryside; all this scene needs is Solsbury Hill and a touching story about reconnecting true love. I see the astonishingly terrible title come up and I want them to drive off the cliff immediately, thirty seconds into the film. This is beginning to feel like a daytime soap opera or TV movie from time-life, Touched by an Angel at Seacliff Inn.

The cast names are being displayed and suddenly Louis Fletcher comes up “its Kai Winn! I can’t get away from her!” background: we are currently going through all of Deep Space Nine again and we HATE Kai Winn; we stick our middle finger up at the screen every time we see her. I automatically don’t trust this character and I haven’t even seen her. Ally Sheedy looks and acts like a flake throughout this entire film. She and Her husband have uprooted their lives to make a new start and sav their marriage (Solsbury Hill starts playing in my head again). They are all set to purchase an estate to fix up as a hotel and she suddenly sees another one across the other side of the beach, tells the real-estate agent who has been working her butt off to broker this deal that she doesn’t fucking want it anymore and proceeds to invite herself into this occupied home because she wants it more. 

Sheedy is a crazy bitch. 

The old lady straight up tells them that the house isn’t for sale but Susan (Sheedy) still obsesses over it like it’s just a matter of time before she can hustle this poor old lady out of her home. At this stage I’m thinking to myself that they are obviously contemplating offing the old bint. She keeps repeating that the house called to her, not a very rational business plan. Her husband is acting like he thinks it’s cute that she’s lost her god damn mind. They start talking about how important it is that they commit to what they are doing, the important thing is not that they need to commit it’s that the house isn’t for fucking sale. 

The old lady walks through her house and a radio starts playing by itself “oooh boogie boogie”. The first “scary” scene in this movie consists of an old lady investigating random music the second is how Susan thinks it’s totally okay to just help herself into the house the next day presumably to say “please let me take your house lady “ and finds blood everywhere. I feel like they may have used up their entire PG violence quota, it’s all flying curtains and shadows from here.

“They’ll need to sell the house now, oh how convenient, suspects no one”. Susan changes her mind about the house and they leave.

Not wanting to look like the cold hearted bitch she really is they wait two months before actually purchasing the house, presumably after the smell of dead old lady is gone. I would have had a nervous breakdown being married to this irrational and impulsive woman. The first jump scare in the film is brought to us by a wine bottle cork going off, they laugh and clink their glasses together “thankyou Lorraine for dying, you’re a champ”.

Susan acts like a flake for another ten minutes or so, waking down the beach so she can see something that no one else will believe. So far this movie has displayed all the horror movie clichés in the first half of the film but in an extremely PG way, like a Mormon at a campfire.  Cue the fearsome animal spirit that will stalk her rest of the film. A dog, an incredibly adorable and non-threatening floof who if it were me I would be scratching his belly and letting him know that he is a good boy. 

Kai Winn finally introduces herself and is all friendly and neighbourly, I don’t buy it and the married couple finally spends their first night in the house together and have the most unrealistically rigid conversation “do you miss your high powered job honey” and then they have floor sex. Susan feels something in the house like a butt naked paranormal investigator “its cold in here” yeah no shit.

The most hilarious thing about this movie is that Sheedy keeps looking at the camera and I don’t think it’s intentional. The fire goes out suddenly and the husband blames it on a draft or something , he’s going to be frustratingly sceptical “ oh it’s okay honey that wasn’t a ghost that was just a bunch of sheets and the wind being moved by two broom sticks and a rubber band, no biggy”.

They find a secret room and talk about a fire and something about the entire plot of the film but I wasn’t listening. Susan was in the attic waiting for something mildly inconvenient to happen and she found a music box with a ballerina inside that looks like a female version of Channing Tatum and an electrician gets electrocuted because the ghost switches the metre box back on because he’s a dick. If my play by play seems disjointed it’s because this movie is disjointed. 

Susan is touching herself in the attic (as you do) and is startled by the sound of electrocution. The tradesman is alive ( fucking PG films) he explains that his watch was miraculously set back six hours, like that matters somehow but I can understand the annoyance of lost time. The married couple have a fight because she thinks something weird is going on but he’s pissed off because she dragged him all the way out here and now she’s talking about ghosts, I can totally see where he’s coming from but he’s being a prick. He seems to only be nice to hear when he wants some floor sex. 

On the beach of plot fulfillment Mark meets another female character who basically says “please use my body to make you feel young again” with her body language. He decides to make love to his wife with a sound that can only be described by someone slowly punching jelly (the kissing, don’t be gross). After the love is done he immediately berates her for believing in ghosts and just being plain old silly. We find out that he had an affair and that’s why they are doing all of this, to save their marriage “totally called it, what a scumbag”. Adultery bait invites her in to live at their bed and breakfast surprising no one. Mark needs to go into her room to “ fix the pipes” and she’s all like “ oh look I’m naked , how careless of me to be naked around you, please let me sit on the bed and let you talk about pipe, let me seduce you with my PG sensuality” . 

The floof invites itself into the house and attempts to mess with them but just ends up looking adorable again. Trying to look all nasty, Floof attack! Nothing happens. Susan does some investigating on the house, probably to take her mind of her crappy life, she finds the tombstone belonging to the original owner of the house (obviously the spirit, I mean duh) and the camera pans to a tombstone that says Sarah “dun dun Duuunnnnnn”.  Mark is taking pictures of Sarah because he has no will power, she gets naked. Don’t do it asshole. He kisses her and then says “I can’t do this I love my wife” too late idiot. 

They have a talk at a bar and he sees a picture of a black dog that suspiciously looks like floof but stills maintains a stern level of scepticism and sarcasm toward anything Susan says. He is literally the most unsupportive person I have ever seen in a film and yet still somehow finds a way to guide us into the third damn sex scene in the film, obviously thinking about Sarah, and sees her face.  Am I supposed to like this guy? He even leads the other lady to commit suicide. She was a ghost anyway, or something I stopped paying attention. An unnecessary dog death completes the horror movie cliché and the marital tension comes to a head. 

Can I just take a moment to say that this is the most un haunty movie of haunt movies. It is so thoroughly un haunty that I would call it a drama with vague allusions of creepiness, kind of. 

The haunting finally happens and whispers to her and takes her ring off, this spirit might actually be the most irritating I have ever seen. His big trick is that he turns the taps on and floods the house, making sure that Mark blames Susan and causes him to throw his hands up in the air and give up on the whole thing. By this stage I have started drawing little ducks all of my page, not noticing that the entire plot is revealed in the next five minutes with a paranormal picture, the reveal that Susan is a doppelganger of the original owners wife who he was obsessed with and a letter explaining everything you need to know to get back on track.

Susan is in a trance about to get ghost raped in a dead ladies dress, the ghost literally dances with her for like two seconds and then tries to undress her, he doesn’t fuck around. Kai Winn decides tap into her psychic ability to save the day and is taken out by backseat floof and Mark finally suspends his disbelief to come save his wife from a very awkward fate. He proves to be fairly useless though and in the, dare I say, only creepy scene in the film two ghosts are set alight and are screaming backwards while writhing around holding each other. 

This brings us to the end of the film where Kai Winn is alive (fucking PG films, she drove off a damn cliff!) and the two main characters decide to carry on with their marriage even though it’s a fucking joke. The “ghosts” were as malicious as a couple of house rats making a nuisance of themselves and were gone before they could even be even slightly creepy.

So it’s finally over and Jake is looking at me with this face that says “ why in the hell did you put me through that” some VHS aren’t  even so bad they’re good, some things are so bad you just want to put them in the Seacliff bin.