2020 October Horror Challenge #52: "Wait Til Helen Comes (2016)"

 

Ok, this was one of my favorite young adult novels as a kid. That book cover up there is exactly how it looked when i first checked it out from the library when i was 12. Heck, I still think it's still a great book now, I read it a few years ago and it holds up surprisingly well. So this movie has a lot to live up to for me. I promised to give it a chance though, because I love the book so much and I love horror movies. I put this movie on my watch list for this year as soon as I heard about it, and I'm crossing my fingers that it's worth a watch.

This movie is about a teenage girl who moves out into the boonies with her mom, brother, stepfather,  and new stepsister Heather. They move into a converted church which is beautiful but also creepy as hell. The new family situation is hard on everyone, but Heather seems especially troubled. She's reserved and quiet and seems lonely, but she clashes with her new stepsister Molly, which makes things even harder. Soon Heather is acting even more strange, and Molly seems to be the only one who realizes this. It turns out that Heather is being visited by the ghost of a little girl named Helen, who wants what Heather has: her life. Can Molly save Heather from Helen before she loses her little sister forever?

Sophie Nèlisse plays Molly,  and her little sister Isabelle Nèlisse plays Heather. I don't know if their family connection helps or what, but they do an amazing job playing off each other. Part of what affected me most about the book was watching Molly grow to love her little sister (even though she's kind of a brat) and watching her fight for her sister, and I was really worried that the movie would lose some of that impact, but it works very well here. They kept the integrity of the book better than a lot of adaptations do.

Maria Bello plays the mom Jean. Why is she always losing her kids to ghosts? Dude lady, you should buy stock in holy water or something. But she's a good actress, so it was cool seeing her here. And Mary Downing Hahn, who wrote the original book, has a small role here as a librarian! Excuse me while I fangirl myself to death.

The story is really creepy. It's always gotten under my skin to read about ghosts who prey on the souls of the living. I think it was the movie "Pulse" that said ghosts hate the living because we have what they can't have anymore: life. That's a freaky idea, and this movie does a good job being quietly terrifying and running with this idea. This would be a great movie to watch with kids if you want to introduce them to your horror hobby but don't want anything too harsh or gory.

The ghostly apparition is kinda silly looking at times, but not too bad, I've watched a lot of these movies, so the effects don't bother me unless they're too awful for me to ignore. The movie might have benefited with the ghostly reveal happening later on, so it could've been more of a mystery whether Heather was really seeing a ghost or not, but since the movie follows the way the book plays out, I didn't mind it. The setting and the scenery are really beautiful, and they help add to the spooky atmosphere. I hate to say it, but some of the scenes work even better in the movie than they did in the book. I'm not familiar with Cullum Rennie, who plays the step-dad, but I liked him better in the movie that I did in the book. He seemed more believable in the movie, and I understood his motivations a little bit better than I did in the book, when I just really wanted to punch him for being such a jerk.

The final third of the movie, where everything comes together, is beautifully shot. I like the nightmare aspect of it, and the way Molly's backstory with her father affects how she sees the situation now, and how it's not just Helen visiting Heather, it's clear that Molly is allowed to see the apparitions too, she just has to figure out why. This is a TV movie, but it aired on Lifetime, and they have a surprisingly good record for horror movies, as far as I'm concerned. I love "Devil's Diary" and "The Watcher in the Woids" remake,  which they aired too. All in all, I'm really glad I checked this movie out, and I think it's a worthy successor to the book, which is high praise coming from me, considering how much I love the book.