The Haunting of Helena (B-)

What a lovely smile she has.

Maybe I've been watching too many bad movies lately. For one thing, they certainly make other movies shine by comparison. Sort of like giving a starving man a piece of dry toast. Insert "Nom nom nom" noises here. Speaking of eating...

The Haunting of Helena (also known by the title Fairytale) was a pleasant surprise. It's a ghost story, for one, and for two, it's got a nice, low-level creep factor to it that results in some pretty solid scares. The acting is competently done (though the young girl who plays Helena, Sabrina Jolie Perez, is occasionally somewhat wooden), the cinematography is nice to look at, and I thought the overall story was pretty good. I only took issue with one special effect, with the rest being pretty well-done.

Sophia (Harriet MacMasters-Green) and her daughter Helena have moved into their own place in Italy. Sophia's husband (Helena's father) has apparently been traveling the world for a couple of years in order to get his head together (or something), and though he occasionally calls via Skype, his relationship with his wife and child are strained due to his absence. Thus, Sophia's desire to move away from what she refers to as his house. The house she and Helena move into, however, proves to be much worse than the one they left behind.

"Sure, the house is haunted. But we live in Italy! Score!"

The two discover a fancy wardrobe in the house, which Helena wants to keep in her room. Eventually, after losing her first baby tooth, Helena claims that the tooth fairy lives in her closet. Following a car accident involving Sophia and Helena, the little girl becomes obsessed with teeth and the tooth fairy. She begins drawing disturbing pictures of the tooth fairy. Of course, some disturbing events take place as the plot unfolds further, such as Sophia's elderly neighbor warning her that she and her daughter should leave while they can.

Sophia takes her to the doctor, who refers her to another physician. The physician examines the drawings, then asks Sophia if anyone has told Helena about what happened in their house back in the days of Mussolini's Italy. The story goes that a gentleman by the name of Battista Greco (Marco Fattibene) caught his wife smiling at another man. To punish her, Battista pulled out all of her teeth and locked her in a wardrobe (yes, that wardrobe) to die.

The mystery begins to unfold bit by bit, and the sanity of both Sophia and Helena comes into question. I won't spoil the details, but by the end of the movie, everything is wrapped up pretty well. There's a neat little twist, too, which I wasn't really expecting, despite the clues that are presented throughout the film.

Those things on the ground? Yeah, they're TEETH.

I really liked The Haunting of Helena despite IMDB's 4/10 user rating of the film (due to a single review). It tells a coherent story, the characters are believable, and the nature of the haunting and its ghost (or tooth fairy, if you prefer) is interesting. It's a little slow at times, but I didn't mind. If you enjoy movies about ghosts and creepy kids that combine supernatural horror with psychological horror, then you should definitely put this one on your watch list. Better yet, go watch it right now, unless teeth (or a lack of teeth, or having teeth pulled) creep you out. As with all my reviews, your mileage may vary.

My only gripe was with Helena's age. I'm a dad, and I know well enough what baby teeth look like. Though the character loses her first tooth in the beginning of the film, it's pretty obvious that she already has her adult teeth. A younger actress probably would have been better for the role, but it's a minor quibble, really.