Delayed Reaction: Things Heard & Seen

Premise: A family moves to a small New York town, into a house that's haunted by a spirit, and...well, you've seen What Lies Beneath, right?

 

I hate when the Netflix algorithm works on me. Not that it correctly suggested a movie I'd like. I'd like it if it did that. I generally know what movies have come out and are coming out. I often have a sense of how good they are or aren't going to be going in. Or, at the very least, I know what they are about or who is in them. Then Things Heard & Seen pops up on my Netflix page. Just released. Starring Amanda Seyfreid, who couldn't be hotter now after her Oscar nomination for excellent work in Mank (another Netflix release). It's even a horror movie, and I love horror movies. Yet I had no idea this movie existed until the Netflix algorithm brought it up. How did this movie sneak up on me so successfully? Anyway, it popped up and I watched it as blindly as anything I've seen lately.

 

Early on, I was pretty impressed with the movie. Amanda Seyfreid. Natalia Dyer. Rhea Seehorn. F. Murray Abraham. What a cast. I like the idea of moving into a haunted house where spirits have unfinished business. Pretty quickly though, the movie stalled and never got more interesting.

 

First of all, this is more of an eerie movie than a horror movie. A while ago, I determined that merely having zombies shouldn't make something a horror movie. Horror is more about the verbs than the nouns of the story. Just having zombies doesn't make World War Z a horror movie. I'm starting to think the same thing about ghosts. Just because a movie has a spirit with unfinished business doesn't mean it automatically has to be horror. In my book, Things Heard & Seen, What Lies Beneath, and Ghost are more supernatural thrillers than horror movies, so I did not get what I was looking for going into this movie. I didn't get the horror movie I thought I was signing up for. That's bad marketing.

 

Secondly, I was really bored by the toxic, deceptive male aspect of the story. Haven't we all seen enough movies about guys who lie, cheat, and kill to maintain the facade of their lives? James Norton as the husband in this is never really likable. The movie does a poor job convincing me why Amanda Seyfried would be with him in the first place. And he does a poor job even maintaining his lies. So, the more his deception revealed itself, and the more it looked like someone wrote a book* after watching What Lies Beneath, the less intrigued I was by it all.

 

*Things Heard & Seen is adapted from a novel, which I do hear is more successful than the film at what it's trying to do.

 

Amanda Seyfreid is OK in the movie. Everyone is allowed a paycheck movie on occasion, and I could see how she would sign onto this with the idea "If they do this right, this could be great for me." The truth is, there are only about 20 actors out there who can and want to wait until the great movies come to them. Everyone else gets a mixed bag of offers. Sometimes you get a great role in a Mank. Other times, you get a lead role in a thriller movie from some journeyman indie directors. It's a little harder to judge James Norton's performance. I don't know him from anything else, so it's easy to confuse my dislike of his character for a dislike of his performance. I don't think the character is compellingly written or performed, but I leave a little room for that to be the performance working as intended. In other words, I hate the character, so maybe that means he's doing it right. I wish Rhea Seehorn had more to do. That's a general comment applicable to any situation though. Natalia Dyer is really wasted. Even she is annoyed that her role is to be the college student the husband has an affair with. Literally, she rolls her eyes at the idea that she's going to have sex with him then does it anyway.

 

It's hard to say I was disappointed by the movie. I thought I was getting a slightly different movie, which wasn't the movie's fault. The supernatural parts of the story felt more like a narrative crutch than value added. Like, this movie could've been done nearly identically without any of it. The cast feels a bit wasted. Not in a depressing way. Just in a "you never know how a movie will come together when you sign on or are making it" way. The less said about this movie the better, so naturally, this Delayed Reaction is abnormally long. Oh well.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend