The Nesting

1981 "The terror that hides inside your mind."
4.9| 1h44m| R| en| More Info
Released: 01 May 1981 Released
Producted By: William Mishkin Motion Pictures
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Info

A New York writer of gothic fiction finds her mansion full of ghosts from a brothel massacre.

Genre

Horror, Mystery

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Director

Armand Weston

Production Companies

William Mishkin Motion Pictures

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The Nesting Audience Reviews

Dorathen Better Late Then Never
Bereamic Awesome Movie
Tayloriona Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.
Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable
WisdomsHammer There are plenty of horror movies where the characters don't do what any typical person would do in their situation, but it happens so often with the main character in this movie that it's laughable. John Carradine and Gloria Grahame (her last film) were terrific, but they have very small parts. There were a couple of great death scenes, but they don't make much sense. It was tough for me to make it through this one. Every scene seemed to drag on. It wasn't suspenseful, it was painful. I don't think it was intended to be a B-movie, but it definitely is. If you like them, you may like this.
yourmotheratemydog715 This post-AMITYVILLE HORROR haunted house film directed by porn director Armand Weston occasionally delivers the goods, but is more-often-than-not lame, overpadded and a little cheesy.Writer Lauren Cochran goes out to the country to try and get past her agoraphobia, but when she moves into a frighteningly familiar octagonal house, she finds that there's things to be afraid of inside as well! First off, I'm rather disappointed that the film didn't make the main character's agoraphobia more of a main plot point. The idea of an agoraphobe renting a haunted house, unable to leave because of crippling panic attacks but unable to stay because of haunting specters, would make for a pretty claustrophobic watch. Instead, Weston's script takes the plot in many different directions, implementing slasher elements, prostitute ghosts and a CHANGELING-like mystery unraveling.Sometimes, it works; there are some actually pretty spooky scenes here and there, and the mystery moves deftly enough to keep you involved. There are also some really fun set-pieces involving sickles and high-rise rescues.Unfortunately, the over-the-top acting and dialogue from most of the supporting characters ruins any atmosphere the film could've created (the writer's quippy boyfriend had me about ready to turn off the film 20 minutes in). The unraveling of the mystery reaches a silly, melodramatic conclusion. And I often found the sound design to be distractingly amateurish, a gripe I do not have very often. Overall, you could do a lot worse with '80s haunted-house flicks (HOUSE WHERE EVIL DWELLS, any AMITYVILLE film), but you could also do better (CHANGELING, SILENT SCREAM).Fun fact: The octagonal house where the film was shot is still standing in New York state and may be the only domed octagonal residence still in existence in the United States!
Mr_Ectoplasma "The Nesting" follows Lauren Cochran, a New York City novelist who begins suffering from crippling agoraphobia. She decides to eliminate the problem by relocating to a remote, rundown mansion upstate for solitude and an opportunity to work on a book; things don't quite go as planned though when it's discovered that the house was a former brothel where multiple prostitutes disappeared fifty years prior.I had never heard of this film and came across a review of it online; I was surprised how under the radar the film is, particularly that in my decades-long existence as a horror fan, I'd never crossed paths with it. It is a strange film—in some ways, it's very sophisticated and thematically interesting, and yet at times it is also terribly awkward, poorly scripted, and borderline tedious. So, what's the attraction here? "The Nesting," in spite of some fundamental problems, establishes an atmospheric glaze over itself that is absolutely flummoxing. The cinematography is surprisingly lush for this type of film, and the location and setting helps bolster the utterly strange vibes of the picture. Some of its best moments hands down are the protagonist's encounters with the ghostly prostitutes; the apparitions appear and disappear from the mise-en-scène as if living characters passing through a room, and their presentation in this way is startling and strangely terrifying. The fact that the majority of the horror scenes here occur in daylight is also another unusual feature of the picture.As I said before, there are some problems with the film, the first being that it seems to toe the line between haunted house film and full-blown psychological horror; there are even moments where it appears to be taking on tenets of a slasher film. This is not to say that a film can't cross-reference genres, but the script here just doesn't manage to do so gracefully. The film is also at times awkwardly edited, which is where some of its budget limitations seem to visibly crop up, and the chemistry between some of the actors is a bit off key. Robin Groves is decent as the lead, although her character is strangely written to begin with. John Carradine shows up as the plutocratic owner of the home, while Gloria Grahame appears in her final screen role as the madame of the bygone brothel.The film's conclusion is quite frankly baffling, and I was surprised to see it end as it did, as the film leads the viewer to believe they will be treated with some sort of conceivable resolution. "The Nesting" ardently resists this, and leaves the viewer with an uncomfortable ambiguity that is atypical of this kind of picture. All in all, I found this film strangely fixating and visually eerie in spite of its hodgepodge script and uneven performances. In the greater scheme, it is a marginal entry in the genre, though I must admit there is something confounding and creepy about it on a base level. Worth a look. 6/10.
Wizard-8 Maybe I have seen too many haunted house movies, but I have to admit that "The Nesting" brought very little new to this creaky genre. It's not bad enough to be called terrible, but it is all the same disappointing. Writer/director Armand Weston does manage to build a little mood and atmosphere, and he does occasionally throw in some detail that you wouldn't expect from a low budget movie. But when it comes to jolts and genuine scares, there aren't any, unless you count the scene when a couple of birds suddenly fly into the frame. A big reason for the lack of horror has to be the screenplay, which unfolds one familiar scene after the other, often at a very slow speed. Though there are some parts of the story that are so murky that the movie often seems like a first draft instead of a story that has been looked over carefully several times. (It doesn't help that there are some jarring edits that add to the confusion.) And where are the POLICE during all the deaths that happen in the movie? Throw in some amateurish acting, and in the end you have a really lame enterprise.