Being and Nothingness

HOME-GROWN, low-budget filmmakers rarely create seamless art--work which reveals talent within the limits of a small budget. Anna Thomas, the producer-director-writer of The Haunting of M sets out to prove that a stylish ghost story can be produced inexpensively. Although her attempt does not really succeed, Thomas displays considerable promise within the limits of her failure.

The Haunting of M is a Victorian ghost story. Even on a low budget, the movie successfully presents a lush and mysterious atmosphere. The cinematography by Gregory Nava imbues light with a sinister and unearthly aura. People quiver before the firelight and become disembodied; eerily-lit heads swathed in darkness. The carefully sculptured garden becomes a foreboding place, a jungle, at dawn. The shadows don't disappear in the sunlight, for much of the intrigue occurs in the silver blue of early morning. Such mysteriousness gives The Haunting of M the patina of a well-made gothic movie. And like many horror tales, the Haunting of M revolves around a headstrong heroine and a vengeful ghost.

The movie, alas, lacks sustained ability to haunt. Thomas provides the necessary disembodied footsteps and floor creaks, but the rest is silence. The featured ghost--not just an amorphous white cloud, but a nattily dressed gentleman named Marion--offers nothing more threatening than a few cross glares. Overabundant in tension, The Haunting of M lacks genuine fright. In the most important scenes, Marion reveals himself to be a lovesick and slightly wrathful admirer of Marianna, played with calculated flirtatiousness by Sheelagh Gilby. Indeed, in his last scenes, Marion becomes truly tender as he reaches out to Marianna, scowling jealously at those who try to prevent the match. Thomas tries to fashion a Victorian Heathcliff--a wrathful and passionate lover--from the bare bones of a ghostly glare and tragic family secret. But rather than a monster, Thomas has created a pathetic man who earns the hesitant sympathy of the audience.

The ghost haunts Marianna in a rather benign way; he loves her, even haunts her with a purer, more romantic love than the one offered by her living (and drippy) beau who totes a camera and nasally announces his affection. Indeed, Marianna's sister, played by Nini Pitts, seems more frightened of the spectre than does Marianna. Rather, Marianna is victimized by her visions of romance which cling to her and draw her from her sleep. How such notions could possibly threaten her, we do not know; nor are we shown why she is so enamoured of Marion. For Marianna seems a petty and spoiled young woman, a willful coquette, whose illness results from self-delusion, not from the spiritual manipulation of a gracious ghost. Marion's uneasiness seems more tangible than that of Marianna. Apparently, he seeks revenge against the social demons of fifty years ago which forbade his marriage to Marianna's great aunt Theresa and which, in turn, led to his death.

HIGH BUDGET FILMS often substitute extravagant endings for meaningful ones, distracting, rather than satisfying us. Some, like the Bond films, require extravagant endings to satisfy the suspense. Thomas has picked a genre which requires not extravagance, but skill. Yet she supplies neither. This ghost story can not succeed without an effective ending, one in which the ghost and its victim confront each other squarely. In The Haunting of M, the ghost is never vanquished, merely disappointed by Marianna. Thomas ending seems muted in its Victorian delicacy. Marion, wrapped in such timeless wrath, should be less amenable to the coquettish defenses of Marianna.

Perhaps the flawed ending results from the false-start-laden beginning. The main characters never transcend a foggy familiarity with the audience. At the start, Thomas sets before us three disjointed vignettes introducing each of the (living) protagonists--Marianna, her sister, their parents and great aunt Theresa--but delineates none of their relationships. As one character says of Marion's lover, the great-Aunt Theresa, "We though she should do something, but she didn't do anything. Nothing at all." In the end one might say the same for Anna Thomas, whose promise as a film-maker remains unfulfilled.