Currently playing on VOD platforms
Directors: Christian Bisceglia, Ascanio Malgarini
MPAA Rating: NR
Film Pulse Score: 3/10
The concept of taking a beloved children’s fairy tale and turning it into something horrific is not something we haven’t seen before. If you give it two thoughts, the idea of a fairy breaking into your child’s room in order to steal their teeth doesn’t seem very pleasant, and provides easy cannon fodder for the horror crowd. Unfortunately, despite attempting to make this age-old tale into something horrific, the end result of The Haunting of Helena is formulaic and poorly made.
The film starts as most of these do, with a single working mother moving into a new home with her young daughter. After the daughter loses a tooth and the tooth fairy comes, things begin getting creepy. Before long both mother and daughter become the targets of a vengeful fairy and must unravel the mystery of what happened in their flat.
While there are a few standout moments, such as a scene involving bloody teeth raining down from the ceiling, there’s unfortunately little positive to say regarding this film. The plot as a whole was entirely too convoluted and ridiculous to take seriously. From the beginning, we feel like we’re in familiar territory and the story does little to deviate from a dull and predictable ghost story. There are plenty of scenes involving the protagonist doing research on her home, only to find that something terrible happened there years ago. Big surprise. There are also multiple false endings, which grow tiresome very quickly.
There’s some fairly cheap looking CG throughout, which result in most of the scares coming off as goofy and ineffective. There are a few insect deaths, reminiscent of the Candyman, which, in addition to feeling out of place, are ridiculous considering the victims seem to just stand still and let themselves be eaten. Few scares in this movie feel earned and most of them seem tacked on and unimaginative.
The dialogue and performances do little to help things, and, in fact, make something mediocre downright bad. While it never feels good to point out bad child acting, it needs to be said that while everyone did a fairly terrible job, the daughter in the film was especially awful. This combined with nearly laughable dialogue made some scenes more painful to watch than the teeth pulling.
The Haunting of Helena is unfortunately another failed attempt at adapting a children’s tale into a horror movie. Despite a few slightly creepy moments, it’s a difficult film to recommend even to the most avid horror enthusiasts. The poor performances, dreadful dialogue, and ridiculous story make nothing more than a forgettable VOD rental.
