Wednesday 11 April 2007

Half Light (2006)

Half-witted might have been a better title for this Demi Moore vehicle (which should have stayed in the garage), a glossily filmed but incredibly preposterous bit of hokum.  She plays a very successful American writer living in London with her husband, played by that weird Scot out of "Lost", and her son.  Her husband also has ambitions as a writer and seems to envy her success.  When the son drowns in the scenic canal adjacent to their home, purportedly through her carelessness at leaving a gate unlocked and her failure to join him at play as promised, we are led to believe that her grief is endless and that she has lost the motivation to live and/or write.  We are more or less told this, since Ms. Moore does not seem up to emoting.  She may still have the body of a young woman, but she has had so much facial surgery that her blank expression reminds one of those Easter Island statues.

Anyhow she takes herself off to a colourful fishing village on the Scottish coast to "heal" and the viewer is now treated to a combination of a ghost story and a let's-drive-the-woman mad scenario.  She finds a soulmate in a widowed lighthouse keeper who it seems died some seven years before and the local psychic keeps telling her that her dead son is at her side attempting to keep her from harm.  Of course it's all about money, but the ghostly spirits are given equal billing to try and create something a little different, without let it be said much success.  I was surprised at all of the positive comments on IMDb concerning this movie -- I'm sure I saw the same one as all of those Demi Moore fanatics!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

If it weren't that you do not have a mean bone in your body I would be tempted
to say 'miaow".   Even in her younger days she did not emote that much - 'About
Last Night' is definitely pre- anything and her roles in the pre-childraising years
did not qualify for Oscar nominations.   I agree the story was more than a little
unlikely as there was no chemistry between Demi and the lighthouse keeper
(unless toyboy status is a child substitute!).