Lady in White (1988)
The year is 1962. The place is Willowpoint Falls. Nobody talks about what happened in the school cloakroom 10 years ago. Now, in the dead of night, Frankie Scarlatti is going to find out why.
October is right around the corner - which usually means free reign for me to just pick the filthiest, scariest, or most monstrous cinema i can find and use the season as an excuse to force the sort of stuff i would normally watch into the universe. Surprisingly enough though, this one isn’t on me - this one was a request that got fast tracked somewhat from the back log on account of it’s requester being the only person besides myself to make it to movie night - can’t win if you don’t show up right? Going into this, all I really took the time to see was “ah yes, ghost story” and didn’t even really find out more than that because it’s all i needed to decide to watch it - that and the fact that I recognize the title from something, be it another movie or an urban legend or something. Well, buckle in for one heck of a ride as tonight we catch a glimpse of the Lady in White.
What a brutal ride it will be as well - within the first what seems like (if not actual) ten minutes of this movie we have a N-bomb get dropped and child murder. If that doesn’t tell you that not all elements of this story are going to be cozy or age like a fine wine, then I don’t know what will. Set in the 1960’s, it was a bit of a different time. We follow our lead character - a kid who gets stuck in a closet as a prank, and witnesses not only the playback of a ghostly kid getting murdered, but also a taste of death himself when the killer comes back looking for something and finds him instead. What follows is a couple of mysteries as our main character eventually tries to unravel finding the ghosts mother, who the killer is, and overall just trying not to die while following his dreams of becoming a writer. There’s a bunch of subplots in here, and they can be rather charged to say the least - such as some racism and people who just plain don’t have their heads on straight.
The actors do a good job. I mean, the young ones aren’t really quite on par with the best, or even the more “standard” good ones of modern times - that one crying scene isn’t fooling anyone at or beyond the age of young adult for example. Most the adults are throwing everything they got at their roles, doing a wonderful job both with body language and overall line delivery. It can be a bit over-blown at times, although not necessarily unrealistic in it’s wackiness such as the grandparents and how they go on around each other. The kid actors don’t always nail their parts, but they have plenty of good moments in there still as well, so it’s not like they are a total bust in the acting department either - just obviously kids.
The characters have a little bit to them. There’s some tragedy and the likes in the main family’s past, so there’s some depth to them and their interactions throughout the movie. Although some of the other characters help to add something to the movie, I wouldn’t necessarily call them super deep characters - but it also doesn’t feel like the point was ever to have all super deep characters. The main dad provides enough moments to get a great feel for his character even just through his actions, and the entire thing certainly feels like it’s from a different time. There shouldn’t be too many moments where you feel like a character is doing something out of the blue - maybe a few times when a character might say a line like “and i was never afraid again” and then get scared off within the next few scenes, but after you get introduced to a character you pretty well know who they are and where they are going.
Don’t be fooled by this wholesome little family…
Costumes work well for the setting, albeit the reality-based nature of it means nothing really blows the mind as standout since it all just blends in and looks natural. The other parts of the effects work are a wonderful little mixed bag. On the one hand, we have all sorts of poltergeist style moving objects, and most of these instances look great. It feels too smooth to be stop motion, but you also don’t really see wires or anything obviously floating around - although you do have a few moments where you could make a good guess as to where the wires might be if they are there. On the flip side of things, you have the green/blue screen work, which doesn’t hold up nearly as well. It’s pretty dang obvious anytime something is on a screen - mat lines, lighting differences, a few times even quality differences make it pretty obvious. It may take some folks out, but it’s not like I haven’t seen worse either. Right in the middle is the ghost effects, which carry through a nice level of transparency and most the time look well done, but aren’t without their own little hiccups like the occasional stationary ghost vibrating compared to the more static scene it’s in.
Audio is mixed well mostly. Something about the deeper lines in the soundtrack or movie in general carry with it a blown-out subwoofer quality, which isn’t exactly the most wonderful thing to hear on a headset, but I imagine it would do wonders for shaking the room around if it was on a surround sound of some sort. The music sometimes had a bit of a disconnect as well, as there is some incredibly whimsy music in there but the movie itself gets wicked dark pretty fast. Other times, the music does a good job of enforcing the mood of the scene, and of course as is normal for me none of it sticks around with me after the movie is done. Line deliveries are normally well done, so audio department has rather minimal road bumps.
Then of course comes all the heavy stuff. You want to see some commentary on racial prejudice and profiling? You want to see some negative commentary on vigilante sort of stuff? Well there’s a bunch of that in there to go along with the child murder main plot. Of course, then you have that entire thing - which you’ll get answers as to who, but you will never really get answers as to why, so it’s just as effective at staying around like a lingering depression cloud when it kicks in that reality rarely has those answers either. For something that seems like such a kid-romp of adventure and mild spooks, it ends up being a surprisingly dark and horrific tale filled with more bodies (technically) than some slasher movies, and most of them are children. Thinking types will probably get a surprising amount out of this I think.
…dead children lie afoot.
This was a surprise of a movie for sure - not entirely what I had thought it would be at all. While I expected a rather cookie-cutter ghost story, what I actually got was a movie filled with child murder, ghosts, and some racial commentary. It’s pretty solidly put together, even if by this point there twists and turns aren’t really so mysterious after I’ve seen so many things as I have. Effects area mixed bag that’s normally good, acting is a little mixed but more than acceptable, and overall it’s a entertaining watch. Mileage for each person will vary, and the aged parts might bother some people way more than others, but even if it’s PG13 I would totally recommend that a parent watch it before letting their kids see it for a maturity check.