SYNOPSIS:
Successful mystery novelist Rachel Carlson (Demi Moore) is
devastated when her beloved seven year-old son Thomas (Beans
Balawi) drowns at her Primrose Hill house. A year later, despite
a record advance for her next novel, she is still too distraught
to write. Her marriage to Brian (Henry Ian Cusick), an editor
and struggling novelist, has also disintegrated, and her best
friend, Sharon (Kate Isitt), arranges for her to rent a secluded
cottage in the tiny and remote village of Ingonish Cove in
the Scottish Highlands.
As
Rachel adapts to life in the charming village, she slowly
develops a relationship with Angus McCulloch (Hans Matheson),
the handsome lighthouse keeper who lives and works on the
deserted island off her coast.
However,
just as Rachel begins to feel restored, she begins to receive
haunting messages from her dead son, warning her of danger.
Unsure whether the messages are real or whether shes losing
her mind, Rachel is plunged into a world of madness, murder
and the supernatural.
MOVIE
REVIEW
Demi
Moore was a huge star back in the early 90’s if you
can recall. She appeared in a host of blockbusters: “Ghost”,
“A Few Good Men” and “Indecent Proposal”
until a string of flops which includes “G.I. Jane”
and “Striptease” caused her to vanish into thin
air. And her failed marriage to Bruce Willis doesn’t
help her career either. Until in recent years, she began to
surface back in the tabloids and media for the wrong reasons,
that is her romance with young “Punk’d”,
Ashton Kutcher and her attention-grabbing cameo in “Charlie
Angels: Full Throttle”.
Just
as everyone thought Moore is ready to revive her flagging
career, she decides to dive into this relatively unknown,
straight to video (in the States) production. Written and
directed by Craig Rosenberg (“After the Sunset”),
“Half Light” is about Rachael; a million-dollar
worth successful thriller writer who sank into depression
after her son drowns. On the advice of her good friend, she
decides to retreat to a house near the sea to continue her
writing career. That’s when strange happenings start
to evolve around Rachael.
The
pacing in “Half Light” is excruciatingly slow.
Maybe it’s Rosenberg’s way to allow you to fully
appreciate Rachael’s predicament. To make up for it,
Rosenberg gives us wondrous picturesque shots of nature, the
vast sea and the nice coastline captured on-location in the
UK. Not to mention the cheesy-looking lighthouse.
For a
movie that’s marketed as a thriller, I’m afraid
there are little jitters and “Half Light” plods
along more like a mystery than a scary, creepy tale. Fortunately,
Moore puts in a reasonably well performance to sustain the
movie as the tortured Rachael and Scottish actor Hans Matheson
who resembles a poor man’s Orlando Bloom do has a certain
charismatic of his own portraying the mysterious lighthouse
keeper.
If Moore
is following her ex-hubby’s strategy (Willis managed
to capture back the audience with his endearing performance
in the 1999 ghostly-thriller “The Sixth Sense”)
to revive her career with “Half Light”, I’m
afraid this movie will hinder her instead.
One
word of advice to Rosenberg: Try not to meddle with too many
genres next time or your recipe in the end will turn out half-baked
(pun intended).
SPECIAL FEATURES
Interviews
- A 15 minutes featurette that consists of interviews
with the director, producer and the cast which includes Demi
Moore and Hans Matheson. Interestingly, Matheson admits that
it was great riding a horse along the beach with Demi Moore
at the back in one of the scenes. Who wouldn't?
Making of - An uninspiring 6 minutes behind
the scenes of "Half-Light". You don't really get
to see much except for Demi Moore closeup, Demi Moore from
afar and Demi Moore behind the camera.
Highlights - What does highlights really
mean? Well just a 8 minutes summarize of the whole movie.
Beware! It contains mild spoilers.
AUDIO/VISUAL:
Presented
in Dolby Digital 2.0 and Dolby Digital 5.0. There's very little
scenes in "Half Light" that make use of the surround
speakers. Dialogues are mostly crystal clear. To add on, the
movie did have a nice, Irish-sounding score. For a movie that
has lots of outdoor day shots, the transfer does not disappoint.
The colour transfer is natural and dark levels are surprisingly
minimal for such a genre.
MOVIE
RATING:
 
OVERALL
DVD RATING :
Review
by Linus Tee
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