An American Haunting

An American Haunting (2005) is Courtney Solomon's supernatural horror film, available to watch online on iFILM, drawn from an old Tennessee legend about a household tormented by an unseen force.

The setting is a remote farmstead in the early 1800s. Respected landowner John Bell (Donald Sutherland) and his family start suffering attacks from something with no body — knocking inside the walls, voices in the dark, bruises left by invisible hands. The entity fixes on Bell's teenage daughter Betsy (Rachel Hurd-Wood), while her mother Lucy (Sissy Spacek) can only watch, helpless. As folklore tells it, this is the lone American case where a spirit was blamed for a man's death.

Solomon leans on candlelight, a creaking house, and the slow dread that the Bells are hiding something shameful. Sutherland and Spacek lend the picture a gravity its pulpy script hasn't quite earned, and a late twist reframes everything that came before. Anyone who liked the gothic chill of The Others should give it a try. Stream An American Haunting (2005) online on iFILM.