When the previews came out, it didn’t look very good. When the movie came out, I only heard bad things about it. It was on HBO tonight and I’m bored to tears. (No hockey on the TV and I don’t care about the teams in the World Series)
Maybe I’m just too jaded. Maybe I’m just too familiar with New Orleans mythos. Maybe I’m just too comfortable with the ideas behind Voodoo, hoodoo, voudon, or any variation thereof. Whatever the reason, the movie bored me to tears.
Basic premise: Kate Hudson is brought in to a decrepit home to care for a dying man. The guy suffered an apparent stroke but something isn’t quite right. The man’s wife is the standard, creepy southerner type. She tells a few stories about the attic and from there I should have turned it off because the rest of the movie is transparent. Years and years ago, two servants were caught “demonstrating” Voodoo to the white children and were hung. We saw the picture of the four (2 servants, 2 children) earlier in the movie and anyone who didn’t put it together right then are probably the same people that enjoy M. Night Shyamalan movies… So, Kate Hudson is immersed in the Voodoo culture and starts to believe. There’s a young lawyer guy that comes to the house a lot and she turns to him for help. Of course, he turns out to be “in on it all”. She tries to protect the old man who still can’t talk. She confronts the old woman and the lawyer and it becomes all out war. She wakes up after getting knocked out and she has the traits of the old woman now. The old woman is paralyzed and in shock. The lawyer and the Kate Hudson body are now the new embodiment of the old Voodoo servants. Yeah yeah, we’ve seen this all before.
The tired old “creepy southerner” character is played out. The writing sucked. They spend 10 minutes doing the “ghosts in the mirrors” routine and then in the VERY NEXT scene, she gets something in her eye and needs her mirror. Oh boy, nothing like a little suspense huh? It’s called plot development; most writers make an attempt at it. Although I did like the fact that her car didn’t go smashing through the locked gates like in every other movie. Of course, the lawyer playing the same “RainMan soundtrack” record was a little spoon-fed, don’t you think? And those were 2 absolutely beautiful PERFECT circles she drew in her panic. Such an artist Kate Hudson is. To be honest, for a creepy southerner movie, “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” was creepier than this.
Leave a Reply