Down a Hall, Darkly

Although Ms. Spenser wasn't too pleased with the last movie we saw, Down a Dark Hall (2018) was just what she was looking for. It's an atmospheric ghost story with a creepy old house.

AnnaSophia Robb stars as a rebellious high-school girl in trouble for fighting and arson. She denies that she started the fires, but nobody pays attention. An invitation to attend Blackwood School for the Gifted and Disturbed is her only option. The school turns out to be a secluded mansion. Her mother and step-father drop her off, telling her that she can call if it gets weird. She replies, "It already is weird." She ain't seen nothing yet.

It turns out that there are only five students, all troublemakers, especially the formidable Victoria Moroles. Headmistress Uma Thurman explains to them that she believes that they can achieve amazing things under her guidance. The lessons she gives include painting, poetry, math, and for Robb, piano.

Although she has never played, she is soon composing masterpieces. The same for her fellow students: they each have discovered an amazing talent that just takes ahold of them - almost as if they were possessed.

OK, SPOILER. Thurman's plan was to have each child possessed by the ghost of a dead genius. For example, one kid is possessed by the ghost of a 19th-c. landscape painter, possibly Hudson River School. There was a hint that Thurman was selling the paintings as undiscovered masterpieces. But she might have just been into reviving dead geniuses.

Robb is now seeing lots of ghosts, and not all of them are dead geniuses. At least one is a scarred man with an eye-patch who might be a pirate? OK, I'm not sure about him. And I'll skip the rest of the story and just say that it ends like Ready or Not.

This isn't that great a movie, but it is just what we wanted. The acting is good, characters are engaging, the premise is good, but most of all, the atmosphere is sumptuously creepy. And the horror never becomes gruesome or gristly. Just a pleasant chill.