What Happened to Dorothy Bell?

I was hoping for much more but I wasn’t entirely disappointed.

The good of this film is really found in the premise. A creepy possessed grandma who moves slowly, hardly speaks and wants to kill you. The opening scene was genuinely pretty scary. And I found the performance for the titular Dorothy Bell by Arlene Arnone to be pretty good.

However, there’s a lot wrong here. Aside of Arnone, everyone else is really bad in this. Often giving laughable performances. The dialogue is all incredibly stilted and unnatural. The film suffers from that classic horror movie blunder, adding too much detail and writing too complex of a plot.

This movie is at its scariest in the first half where we are just given lingering shots, slow turns and dark corners. It loses all steam once it starts introducing the mythology and trying to unravel a mystery.

It had potential. I loved the opening and much of the first half, but it just really goes downhill, culminating in a whacky finale that is more silly than scary.

82/100 good scares here - lacked a little common sense on what to do with the footage

I really enjoyed the movie, some pretty good scares and doesn’t solely rely on jump scares