Lauren Cochran (Robin Groves) is a writer who lives in New York City and lately has been suffering from anxiety attacks, which her Doctor, Webb (Patrick Farrelly) put down to a condition called agoraphobia, which is a fear of leaving the house. Lauren decides to escape Manhattan and head to a small town called Dover Falls to finish her current novel. Her friend Mark Felton (Christopher Loomis) drives her to Dover Falls. They stop by the side of the road, take a break and stretch their legs. Lauren comes across an unusual large octagonal house that she feels she knows. It's exactly the same house she wrote about in one of her previous books entitled 'The Nesting'. And that the cover illustration on the book that she described for the artist to draw is precisely the same as this house she is looking at now, even though she has never been there before. She immediately decides to rent the property. She makes arrangements with the house's owner, a Colonel Lebrun (John Carradine) and his grandson Daniel Griffith (Micheal David Lally) and moves in straight away. That night Lauren has a dream about the house, or was it a hallucination or possibly even ghosts? While visiting, Dr. Webb has an 'accident' and is killed. The local handyman Frank Beasley (Bill Rowley) is mysteriously drowned after trying to attack Lauren. More strange things happen, record players start on their own, words are mysteriously typed onto her work and Lauren continues to see strange people who seem able to just appear and disappear at will. She decides to investigate the house's history, and talks with a local farmer called Abner Welles (David Tabor) who becomes violent towards her when questioned about the house. Lauren becomes more and more unsure if what she has experienced is real, hallucinatory or if indeed there are ghosts inhabiting the house. Co-written and directed by Armand Weston I thought this was a decent enough haunted house horror film. The script by Weston and Daria Price takes quite a long time to establish the situation and is fairly slow going at times. But I have to say it kept me pretty interested and watching right through to the end. One thing that disappointed me was the lacklustre ending, after all the build-up I was hoping for something a little more substantial than what was offered, it just ends up being a bit of a let down and rather pedestrian. Robin Groves was good in the leading role, but I thought Micheal David Lally was awful. There's not much gore in it, just a scythe whacked into someones face, someone is impaled and some gunshot wounds at the end. There's a bit of nudity, but not much. The film looks OK and has a decent atmosphere to it, and the octagonal house is both unusual and cool, I don't think I've ever seen another house like it. If you don't mind a horror film with a slightly slow pace then you could do a lot worse than this, but then I suppose you could probably do a lot better as well. Worth watching, if you can find a cheap copy or catch it on T.V. for free.
Review of The Nesting
