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An American Haunting is a 2006 American horror film written and directed by Courtney Solomon. It stars Donald Sutherland, Sissy Spacek, Rachel Hurd-Wood and James D'Arcy. The film was previewed at the AFI Film Festival on November 5, 2005 and was released in U.S. theaters on May 5, 2006. The film had an earlier release in the U.K. on April 14. The movie was panned by critics and audiences and performed poorly at the box office.
The film is based on the novel The Bell Witch: An American Haunting, by Brent Monahan. The events in the novel are based on the legend of The Bell Witch. The film switches from the 19th Century to the 21st Century and features a side story about a recently divorced mother whose daughter is going through something like the same experience as Betsy Bell.
Tagline: Possession knows no bounds
While modern research and even some earlier accounts of the legend seem to suggest that the poltergeist only referred to itself as Kate Batts, as she may have outlived John Bell, there have never been any accounts of Betsy Bell creating the Bell Witch to protect herself.
The film also ignores the tradition that the spirit eventually transitioned from being a poltergeist, a spirit which cannot communicate through speaking, to an unmanifested spirit who spoke to the family often.
The allegations of John Bell's sexual abuse and subsequent death are new additions to the story. The movie adds and subtracts many things from the traditional legend of the Bell Witch. For instance, the movie ends with the idea that Betsy created the Witch to protect herself from her father's abuses; while the traditional legend tells that the family still believed that the witch was Kate Batts. Though it cannot be ruled out because abuse may have been too delicate a topic during the time period, this may have been invented to answer why exactly the poltergeist seemed too warm to other members of the Bell family.
John Bell's actual death in legend has traditionally been the fault of the poltergeist, Kate Batts or otherwise. In the film, a muddled turn of events seem to instead suggest that Betsy is responsible for John's death, and that his wife is complicit in the act.Wikipedia |
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