“THE LEGEND OF LUCY KEYES” (2006)

Staring: Julie Delpy, Justin Theroux, Brooke Adams, Mark Boone Junior, Cassidy Hinkle & Kathleen Regan
Written & Directed by John Stimpson

Polly Staffle Rating: **

When John Stimpson purchased a house in Princeton, Massachusetts he had no idea of the history behind the area. Soon he began to hear of a legend that has been passed down from generation to generation about a 4-year-old girl who went missing in 1755. No one knows what happened to the child. It’s as though she vanished. Her mother lived her life trying to find out what happened, but went to her grave never knowing. Many believe the ghost of the child and her mother haunt the surrounding woods to this day. Neither soul is able to rest. This is the intriguing story behind “The Legend of Lucy Keyes.” But oddly, Stimpson isn’t a character in the film. He is actually the writer and director of this project.

Using the true story Stimpson unearthed about the former owners of the property he now resides on, “The Legend of Lucy Keyes” tells the fictional tale of a present day family moving from the city to the country and getting mixed up in some paranormal activity. What we have here is great groundwork for a potential classic horror movie. You’ve got real life influences, a mysterious legend, the whole outsiders vs. the town element, and oh yeah – ghosts. In the right hands, someone like M. Night Shyamalan, this could be “The Shinning” meets “The Ring” meets “The Blair Witch Project” meets “Children of the Corn.” I’m not quite sure what it is, but this movie fails to live up to that potential. It’s not due to budget restraints at all. Even though this is a low budget film, the special effects are great and there’s a good cast as Julie Delpy (“An American Werewolf in Paris”) and Justin Theroux (Joe on “Six Feet Under”) play Mom and Dad of the newly arrived family. I also love the direction the film takes in explaining the child’s disappearance and feel it is quite fitting for today’s society to think about and discuss. Not to give anything away, but the reason for the child’s disappearance is the same reason almost all wars, either neighborly or global, are fought.

Where this film goes wrong I think is in the showing of a ghost too soon and the development or lack of development in suspense. “The Legend of Lucy Keyes” opens with “Darkness Falls” / “They” type ghosts haunting the family to try and hook you into the film. It’s not an intro, it’s actually just a scene from later in the movie pasted onto the beginning of the film. It really doesn’t fit at all. When it first opens, you get the feeling you just popped in a VHS tape the previous renter hadn’t been courteous enough to rewind. But those days are in the past, so perhaps the DVD is scratched and it jumped ahead several chapters into the disc. That’s not it either. It’s just a bad choice the editor or the director of the film made.
So after this opener, which plays again in full later and is one of the only scenes with ghosts in it, the story begins with Mr. and Mrs. Guy Cooley and their two daughters moving to this little town. Guy has been brought in to help bring electricity alternatives using the town’s natural resources of wind to this farming community. No one has told him that the town doesn’t really want any of their land disturbed by the windmills or the fact that supernatural entities are the main reason they are reluctant.

The Cooleys were also never informed that the pig farm they will be living next to, surprise, stinks. Come on city slickers, give the poor farmer a break. Pigs are filthy animals for God’s sake. Why do you think Jules of “Pulp Fiction” refuses to eat pork chops and bacon? Cooked pork doesn’t even ever smell good, and yet you expect a farm featuring animals that roll around in their own feces all day and eat slop to smell like freshly made Krispy Kreme doughnuts? The Cooleys were also not informed their neighbor Jonas (Mark Boone Junior) is, surprise, a no bathing, mentally disturbed redneck. Well, he does happen to raise filthy animals and then slaughter them for mass consumption. He also lives out in the country alone and happens to be one of the only individuals that will admit to having seen or heard Lucy and her mother roaming the woods. To add to that, the Cooleys have a daughter named Lucy, and Mom loves to scream for her at the top of her lungs, so that probably screws with the farmer’s head a bit.

All these things aside, “The Legend of Lucy Keyes” isn’t really a horror movie. It’s not even a thriller. The DVD artwork leads one to believe otherwise, but this is simply a drama with a few supernatural elements mixed in. I felt like the horror aspects should have either been downplayed more or been the main focus of the film. It’s not that bad of a watch, but the potential for a real solid scarefest is there. Had this been a made-for-TV movie like “Rose Red” I’d be praising it, but it’s not, so it seems too family friendly. I needed more creepiness, more scares and especially more explicit content. We get a scene with a pig head on a stick out in the woods, but that’s about as far as any of the gore goes.

The Independent Film Festival of Boston audience award winner does look quite well, however. Shot on Panasonic Varicam’s HD 24p camera, “The Legend of Lucy Keyes” was a completely digital production from start to finish with a tapeless post production. The end result is pretty much movie-theatre quality. I’m not saying this looks as good as something shot on 35mm, but it’s extremely comparable. I don’t know what the budget was, but it was supposedly less than a million. So to me, that’s a huge plus for indie filmmakers and High Definition technology. Sure you’ve had filmmakers like Robert Rodriguez making great looking digital movies for years now, but while his budgets are low in comparison to your average Hollywood blockbuster, he’s still in a completely different league than the straight-to-DVD crowd.

As the digital revolution continues, the playing field between the studios and the independents will become more and more equal. Regardless of what the final product cost to make, however, most important is always how effective it is as a story and an overall cinematic experience. In the end, that’s what hurts lame studio genre releases like “The Hills Have Eyes” and “Snakes on a Plane.” It’s also what happens to ruin “The Legend of Lucy Keyes.”

- CCF, September 2006