Audrey Rose (1977): C-

Vishnu sits in for Satan in Audrey Rose, a possession thriller in The Exorcist mold that replaces Christian claptrap for Hindi hokum. Elliot Hoover (Anthony Hopkins) is convinced that prepubescent Ivy (Susan Swift) – the daughter of Manhattan ad exec Bill Templeton (John Beck) and wife Janice (Marsha Mason) – is filled with the spirit of his dead daughter Audrey Rose, who died in a horrible car accident mere minutes before Ivy’s birth. Despite the fact that Hoover has been stalking her family and has a tendency to kidnap Ivy, Janice falls for Hoover’s reincarnation jive, thus turning director Robert Wise’s (West Side Story, The Sound of Music) thriller into a piece of Eastern-religion propaganda stuffed full of gibberish about the indestructibility of the human soul and culminating in an abysmal court case in which Hinduism is vindicated as an acceptable explanation for criminal behavior. A glass-shattering finale piles on the obvious symbolism, but it’s the torturously serious-minded approach to such a rote horror story – the most frightening element of which is a photograph of crazy-eyed Ivy with a loony bin smile – as well as a straight-faced closing quote from the Bhagavad Gita (!) that makes one pine for the sweet, comforting embrace of eternal darkness.

Comments

[frank]

Yup, it sucked. Not even worth watching once.