begob Fleeing from her useless husband after the death of her daughter, a woman rents a house where the past revisits with deadly intent. But whose past is it?An overlooked classic? Not quite, and I can see where the haters and lovers are coming from.First up, this is London in the '70s, so the mix of classes is plausible and the notion of well-to-do school children suffering cursed lives makes for a good plot device that drew me into the mystery. There's the usual guff about research/asylum-dweller revealing a clue just before she dies etc, but the story does get its creeps on and ends with chilling ambiguity.The main problem is the first half tells a drab, simplistic story with no spark in the dialogue, and it's hard to tell if it's going anywhere. Sometimes it feels like slice-of-life meets Damian Omen. But the acting is good enough to keep me engaged, with plenty evidence why Farrow was in demand for close-ups.The score is decent, but it misjudges several scenes - especially the mirror reveal toward the end - with cheery/wistful plinky-plinky synth.Overall, a good story that undersells itself at the start. A lot of material could have been cut out to focus on the mother-daughter theme.ps. Take a look at the cast - some nice names in there, and I missed the Downton Abbey link. Plus Mrs Flood was a highly prolific bit-parter - RIP.

Johan Louwet Well I haven't seen too many movies starring Mia Farrow. Her most famous role is probably as Rosemary in Rosemary's Baby in which she performed greatly. It was a pleasant surprise to see her in the main role. 9 years later she doesn't seem to have aged much. And here she also carries the movie. And again it revolves around a child of hers. Trying to get over the loss of her daughter Julia leaves her husband and goes to live on her own. What she doesn't know is that the house holds a dark secret. She starts to see visions of a girl that looks a lot like her own daughter. As she is trying to reveal this mystery with the help of people knowing bits of info about the past inhabitants of the house, bad things start to happen to people around her. I must have missed a few things as I didn't understand Julia's actions sometimes. Reading some opinions here it's more clear to me now and I must applaud the writer for it's cleverness. It's based on a book which probably explains things a bit better than the movie. Very overlooked which it really shouldn't be.

Michael_Elliott The Haunting of Julia (1977) ** 1/2 (out of 4)Mia Farrow plays Julia Lofting, a woman suffering from depression after her daughter choked to death on an apple. After being released from a hospital Julia decides to leave her husband and buy a house on her own where she just sits around crying over her loss but soon a vengeful ghost starts to visit her. THE HAUNTING OF JULIA appears to have quite a few fans and while the opening thirty-minutes are great the film quickly falls apart and runs out of fresh ideas. I've heard that the novel by Peter Straub is actually very good and I think it's clear that something has been lost from the page to the screen. I say that because the film starts off as your typical ghost story but then it starts to branch off to other murders and other visions. Several supporting characters are introduced and before you know it the "story" has gotten much bigger yet it never really goes anywhere. The first thirty-minutes, as I said, are great and then the next twenty or so minutes features non-stop scenes of Farrow either crying or having someone telling her to move on in life. These scenes really start to repeat themselves and I think some of them should have just been taken out. The final twenty-five minutes are when all hell breaks loose and it just seems too uneven and messy for its own good. Farrow offers up an excellent performance as the grieving mother and there's not a single frame where you won't believe that she's this character. The supporting players are also fine even though none of them are given a great role. The film's greatest moment is the first scene where we get a very dramatic and chilling account of the child's death. I think any parent will really be shaken by this sequence, which is brilliantly directed and the impact is certainly felt. It's just too bad that the rest of the film didn't contain as much power.

enw Thirty-three years ago this seemed like a tired takeoff on DON'T LOOK NOW. With the clunkers that are presently out there, it looks like a masterpiece.Why? Well, it's not an EXACT copy – also, it has these people called ACTORS in it.Of course, modern audiences probably wouldn't find it very exciting. After all, the botched-up tracheotomy and infantile castration are both off-screen.Furthermore, it has a story, that thing, you know, giving you a headache and taking time away from the torture porn. No, they wouldn't like it at all.Have you noticed those "user comments" on film sites? You know: I Don't THINK THIS IS A VERY GOOD MOVI In fact I THINK THIS MOVI SUKS AND ALL MY FRIENDS THINK SO TO I Don't KNOW WHY ANYONE WOULD THINK THIS WAS A GOOD MOVI CAUSE IT Totally SUKS Totally SO AL YOU MORANS OUT THERE WHO THINK THIS IS A GOOD MOVI GET A LIFE CAUSE YOU SUK (Was this comment helpful to you?) Originally I just thought it was because, as we all know, the Internet is for Retards. But I'm beginning to think that this may actually be a sample of the movie-going community, some of them perhaps even twelve years old or more.Apparently, this is an adaptation of a novel by Peter Straub, who also supplied the goods in the dazzling GHOST STORY. MIA FARROW is as vulnerable as ever, and KEIR DULLEA her son-of-a-bitch husband – he should probably have stayed on Jupiter.The traumatic loss of a child has of course long since become a stock-and-trade of horror movies, the idea being that it makes the bereaved mother more susceptible to supernatural influences (especially dead children). Nor, I'm sure, will it come as a great surprise to anyone that the juvenile ghost is "evil".Still, the concoction is served with an enthusiasm and attention to detail and effect, from the cozy séance turning into a nightmare to the mother's gleeful confession that she throttled the little monster, that keep you watching. Unfortunately, what might have been an ominously "happy" ending is jettisoned for a standard horrific one.There is the usual amount of body-bags and puzzlement on the part of the audience as to why missing people aren't missed – still, British professionalism is everywhere present. Jolly good show!