Paul Andrews
The Legend of Lucy Keyes is set in the small rural New England community of Princeton where married couple Guy (Justin Theroux) & Jeanne Cooley (Julie Delpy) & their two young daughters Lucy (Cassidy Hinkle) & Molly (Kathleen Regan) have just moved into an old 18th Century farmhouse. Guy has been hired by Princeton mayor Samantha Porter (Brooke Adams) to develop a site & build eight alternative energy windmill turbines on it which has split the town down the middle, Porter stands to make over a million dollars if the deal & development goes ahead so pushes Guy. Meanwhile Jeanne digs into the history of the farmhouse & it's land & discovers that two hundred & fifty years ago a young girl named Lucy Keyes went missing & was never found, local legend says that her mother Marha can still be heard calling for Lucy even now...Co-edited, written & directed by John Stimpson I have to say that this dull as dishwater rural drama with a hint of supernatural ghost story thrown nearly put me to sleep & I am actually quite surprised I made it all the way through to the end. The biggest problem with The Legend of Lucy Keyes is that fact that it's so slow, any slower & it would be going backwards with a script that doesn't even mention Lucy Keyes & her disappearance until after the forty minute mark. I have heard of build-up & scene setting but there's build-up & scene setting & just plain tedium where literally nothing happens for ages & The Legend of Lucy Keyes falls squarely into the tedious category as far as I am concerned. The script can't quite decide whether it wants to be a rural drama with the local opposition to the windmills & a subplot about the Mayor getting rich off the development or a proper supernatural mystery with the disappearance of Lucy Keyes that predictably is finally solved. The murder mystery at the end end starts & finishes within 30 seconds & the whole film is so lethargic & slow. The character's are stock ones with urban city folk moving to a rural area, the local scaremonger who talks of local legends, the odd local who is wary of strangers & the like. The mystery element just doesn't build that well, it's all too predictable & slow & at just over 90 minutes it feels like six hours.Forget about any proper horror as there isn't any, there's a couple of flashbacks & one shot that might have been a ghost but otherwise the whole film is quite ambiguous as we are never sure what leads Lucy Cooley to find Lucy Keyes body or how the mayor died. The makers just seemed more interested in having Guy & Jeanne talk to people about nothing in particular, a lot. The whole film looks alright but there's no real style here or anything that memorable on show.Filmed in 2004 but not released anywhere until 2006 one can understand why, actually shot in Princeton in Massachusetts. The acting is alright but nothing special, I take it Brooke Adams needed the money.The Legend of Lucy Keyes is a film that I hated, it's so slow & predictable with a script that wavers between rural drama & supernatural mystery but doesn't satisfy on either count. For insomniacs only.
slayrrr666
"The Legend of Lucy Keyes" is a slow and boring, though potentially interesting ghost drama.**SPOILERS**Wanting to get out of the city, Jeanne Cooley, (Julie Delpy) and her family, husband Guy, (Justin Theroux) and their two daughters Lucy, (Cassidy Hinkle) and Molly, (Kathleen Regan) decide to move to a house out in the country. Meeting up with Samantha Porter, (Brooke Adams) his boss and the reason for the move to build a new series of windmills for the town, they get the town up in arms over the development. While staying in the house, she begins to become tormented by strange noises and visions, and even finds a hidden map of the town, which she later finds is connected with a child's strange disappearance in her house. Noticing that they're lives are paralleling that of the disappeared children, the local legend about a lost child makes her fear for her children's safety, especially when it looks close to coming true.The Good News: There wasn't a whole lot in here that was all that good. One of the few things is that the woods do look really creepy and spooky. Using the leaf-less ones with long twigs approach adds immensely to the style, giving it a really nice feel and an air of menace. Since just about every time it's featured is due to a night-time search inside and a little bit of daytime viewing makes them a little creepier than they should. When it finally gets around to it's ghost-story roots, it's surprisingly watchable. The main ghost's appearance is pretty creepy, a transparent image of a disfigured head with bloody wounds around the face. The fleeting times it's visible it has a great look and a distinctive feel, and as it's not over-killed with repetitiveness, it hold up better than it should. The one main attack is really good, injecting some action into the film and comes the closest to scoring some scares. It's best touch, though, is the conveyance of pain and anguish over the loss of a child. Not done all that much, but it's effectively done here and is used at the right times to get the most out of it. Otherwise, this is a really disappointing ghost film.The Bad News: This was a really weak and disappointing film. Despite the great premise and oodles of potential possible, the result is rather unremarkable. The first flaw is that the majority of the time is spent with subplots that are unrelated to the main intent and have nothing to offer except boredom. The concern of the citizens over the windmills, which is clichéd in and of itself, takes up a lot of time and doesn't get resolved, other than a nod that they barely approve of the idea happening in the first place. The struggle to get the family to accept the idea of the move lasts longer than it should, and is again really wrongly handled. The biggest strike, though, comes where the biggest scares should be, which is the mystery surrounding the town. This is relegated to the back-story of it's own film, as it takes a near eternity for us to even get to scenes that relate to this subplot. The first hour is concerned with the different troubles associated with the reason why the family moved, namely from the townspeople, and very rarely is there anything that comes up with the ghosts. This means that it's a largely slow and painful experience for the first half, and things pick up slightly towards the end, but the only thing in the film that generates any sort of excitement is a nice attack on the family and the final chase into the woods. Beyond this, though, there isn't all that much and it instead feels more like a drama with horror elements than anything. The last major problem with the film is the premise itself. While nice and capable of being entertaining, it doesn't really hold up as much as it should. The very idea of a ghost roaming endlessly in search of someone who is dead strikes as absurd, since death would be the one event capable of reuniting all concerned. This hasn't occurred to anyone, and makes the film have even less credibility than it already does. All in all, this was a suitably boring, though potentially good ghost story.The Final Verdict: While the story and the potential are there, the rest of the film really falters from almost every angle. It can be quite entertaining if in the right mood, but this has been done elsewhere much, much better so only ghost-film enthusiasts or for those that love these kind of horror-dramas.Rated R: Violence, some Language and children in danger
phoenix1955again
Being based on a true disappearance, I think the movie did justice to the mystery from the 1700s. For an independent film, it had a lot less gore than most fright flicks and it is to be commended for that. Expanding the tale to solve the mystery may have been too ambitious a project for the director. However, I find the bittersweet ending to have been well thought out and fairly executed. I think the fear that the Keyes descendant felt should have been explored more in the script, but perhaps explanation for that was left on the editing floor. All in all, I felt it was a decent attempt at solving a centuries-old mystery in a manner that unfortunately, sadly still occurs in this day and age.
Stephanie (umassbluangel)
I worked as a production assistant on the movie and was pleasantly surprised by the movie. When I read the script I thought it would be awful because 50% of the lines include the word "LUCY" in them... But this movie is far better than a lot of movies coming out of Hollywood these days. I've seen it three times and it gets better every time. One of the only downsides is the quality of SOME of the child actors (Although Cassidy was excellent). Other than that the story is believable and it flies by. Everyone that I have taken to see it thought it was good and definitely better than, say, Rob Schneider movies. The cinematography was excellent. The clam bellies tat are used looked realistic (althought I am slightly biased since I helped make them all). Actors were professional. John Stimpson did a fantastic job directing.
