The Seamstress
Ten years ago, in Rue Morgue's September 2009 issue, I saw an add for a movie called The Seamstress. The blurb describing it made it seem interesting, and I liked the cover artwork (shown below). So last night, after ten years, I finally got around to watching it.
It was not everything I had imagined it would be.
The plot revolves around Allie (Kailin See) who, along with five of her friends, goes looking for her missing father on an island off the coast of her hometown, a town which was previously the site of a series of child murders blamed on "The Seamstress." These murders were never solved, although a local school teacher was blamed, leading to her murder at the the hand of a vigilante mob. She placed a curse on the mob and the real culprit before she was killed, and now her restless spirit haunts the island, murdering trespassers.
The Seamstress is not a completely incompetent film necessarily, but it has a lot of flaws. The pacing is off. The story is weak. There are a lot of unanswered questions. Why does the spirit begin to kill off the main group of friends when her backstory claims her curse was specifically on the vigilante mob and the real killer? How does Sheriff Logan (Lance Henriksen) suddenly determine the real murderer after years in the dark? What are all these vintage photos that keep flashing on the screen during dream sequences and flashbacks? Most of the photos didn't seem to serve any particular purpose or relate to the plot at all.
Also, any good supernatural film needs a set of rules for its ghosts and ghouls follow, a set of rules that the audience can grasp in order to understand the stakes. In the Sinister films, the family must move houses before the curse can strike; in The Ring, potential victims have to show the cursed tape to someone else in order to save themselves, etc. The rules in The Seamstress don't make any sense. When one character starts shouting about the danger of the rules having been broken, it means nothing to the audience, because the rules weren't clear in the first place.
Finally, the acting. The acting is almost uniformly bad, with the exception of Henriksen, who does his best with what little he's given to work with. Kevin McNulty (a bit part actor, whose best role just might be in the Supernatural episode, Ask Jeeves) is also decent, although his sweater is on backwards for the entire film for no explicable reason, a fact which irritated the hell out of me despite its insignificance.
Of the main group of friends only Lara Gilchrist, as Dina, shows any believable emotion. Many of the actors, particularly lead See, display emotions that are
UP HERE
when they need to be
all the way
DOWN HERE
See is constantly over acting, frequently yelling her lines when a more restrained approach would have served better. Of course some of the fault may lie with a director and writer whose attempts to make their characters seem relatable end up just making them unlikable and weird. Jason (David Kopp, Freddy vs. Jason) appears to be our romantic lead, but he burps rudely and makes fun of other characters to the point where any emotional resonance intended by his eventual death just falls flat. Another character, Albert (James Kirk) wears a tie and dress shirt to go camping, wanders off into the woods alone to masturbate, and at one point knocks himself out by running face first into a tree. These behaviors come across less like quirky character traits and more like attempts to shoehorn the Three Stooges into an otherwise serious film.
All complaints aside, the wooded locations of The Seamstress redeem the film somewhat. They are creepy and beautiful all at once, and the forest scenes are well shot. Also, near the end of the film, some of the characters stumble across a web of string containing cocooned humans, a spooky set piece that could have been put to much better use had it been included earlier. The ghost herself is also decently spooky as long as she's kept in the shadows and corners of the screen. When we see her up close, the crappy CGI is too obvious.
At the end of the day, I'm glad I finally watched The Seamstress. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to anyone, unless your only other option is The Gallows or watching paint dry, but I don't totally regret watching it either. The Seamstress is pretty bad, bud I've seen worse, which is about the best thing I can say about it.
It was not everything I had imagined it would be.
The plot revolves around Allie (Kailin See) who, along with five of her friends, goes looking for her missing father on an island off the coast of her hometown, a town which was previously the site of a series of child murders blamed on "The Seamstress." These murders were never solved, although a local school teacher was blamed, leading to her murder at the the hand of a vigilante mob. She placed a curse on the mob and the real culprit before she was killed, and now her restless spirit haunts the island, murdering trespassers.The Seamstress is not a completely incompetent film necessarily, but it has a lot of flaws. The pacing is off. The story is weak. There are a lot of unanswered questions. Why does the spirit begin to kill off the main group of friends when her backstory claims her curse was specifically on the vigilante mob and the real killer? How does Sheriff Logan (Lance Henriksen) suddenly determine the real murderer after years in the dark? What are all these vintage photos that keep flashing on the screen during dream sequences and flashbacks? Most of the photos didn't seem to serve any particular purpose or relate to the plot at all.
Finally, the acting. The acting is almost uniformly bad, with the exception of Henriksen, who does his best with what little he's given to work with. Kevin McNulty (a bit part actor, whose best role just might be in the Supernatural episode, Ask Jeeves) is also decent, although his sweater is on backwards for the entire film for no explicable reason, a fact which irritated the hell out of me despite its insignificance.
Of the main group of friends only Lara Gilchrist, as Dina, shows any believable emotion. Many of the actors, particularly lead See, display emotions that are
UP HERE
when they need to be
all the way
DOWN HERE
See is constantly over acting, frequently yelling her lines when a more restrained approach would have served better. Of course some of the fault may lie with a director and writer whose attempts to make their characters seem relatable end up just making them unlikable and weird. Jason (David Kopp, Freddy vs. Jason) appears to be our romantic lead, but he burps rudely and makes fun of other characters to the point where any emotional resonance intended by his eventual death just falls flat. Another character, Albert (James Kirk) wears a tie and dress shirt to go camping, wanders off into the woods alone to masturbate, and at one point knocks himself out by running face first into a tree. These behaviors come across less like quirky character traits and more like attempts to shoehorn the Three Stooges into an otherwise serious film.
All complaints aside, the wooded locations of The Seamstress redeem the film somewhat. They are creepy and beautiful all at once, and the forest scenes are well shot. Also, near the end of the film, some of the characters stumble across a web of string containing cocooned humans, a spooky set piece that could have been put to much better use had it been included earlier. The ghost herself is also decently spooky as long as she's kept in the shadows and corners of the screen. When we see her up close, the crappy CGI is too obvious.At the end of the day, I'm glad I finally watched The Seamstress. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to anyone, unless your only other option is The Gallows or watching paint dry, but I don't totally regret watching it either. The Seamstress is pretty bad, bud I've seen worse, which is about the best thing I can say about it.
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