HAUNTING MELISSA (2013)

Studio:       Hooked Digital Media
Director:    Neal Edelstein
Writer:       Andrew Klavan, Neal Edelstein
Producer:  Kevin Washington, Neal Edelstein
Stars:     Kassia Warshawski, Travis Nelson, Barb Mitchell, Greg Lawson, Jasmine Berg, Stefanie Bartlett, Lorette Clow, Larry Reese, Christian Laurian Kerr, Lisa Moreau

Review Score:

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Summary:

Haunted by her mother’s ghost, a young woman is led to unravel an occult connection to a sinister small town conspiracy.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Chapter 1 – Open the Door – 11:20 – An anonymous broadcaster with a disguised face and voice implores the viewer to learn the truth about Melissa Strogue’s unexplained disappearance. Someone unseen stalks the Strogue family farmhouse in Upton, Kansas from outside. Inside, Melissa and her friend Holly investigate ghostly noises, but stop at the door of the bedroom where Melissa’s mother Katherine Rosemary Strogue died. Melissa and Holly follow the sound of a young girl singing in a pained voice to an empty room where the radio turns on by itself. The girls return to the door that Melissa’s father Jack Strogue keeps locked. Holly tells Melissa to open it, but Melissa refuses and insists that Holly turn off the camera. While Melissa sleeps later, a shadow passes outside her bedroom door. Melissa wakes and notices the camera recording her.

Chapter 2 – Into the Graveyard – 20:15 – Melissa visits her therapist Mrs. Carroway to discuss her absentee boyfriend Brandon who won’t come home from school, her avoidant father who always works on the road, and her haunted house. Melissa recounts how her mother lost her mind before dying of a brain aneurysm, always muttering to herself and pacing inside the locked room. Melissa also remembers waking one time to see her mother standing over her bed with glowing eyes while holding a cross. A man in a workman’s jumpsuit later revealed to be family friend Mike Cole secretly observes the therapy session from outside the office’s window. Mrs. Carroway suggests that Melissa start keeping a video diary to work through her mother’s death. Melissa has a text chat with Holly. Melissa’s father leaves a voicemail on the landline at home that becomes corrupted by a ghostly voice. After beginning her first video diary entry in the kitchen, Melissa visits her mother’s grave and notices Mike Cole driving by. While symbolically speaking to her mother, Melissa is startled by Holly’s 10-year-old brother Carter. Carter then enters a trance. With his eyes glowing, Carter speaks cryptically in the ghostly voice and instructs Melissa to “open the door.” Carter returns to normal and runs away. Back at home, Melissa finds the flowers she left on her mother’s headstone in front of the locked bedroom door.

Chapter 2.1 – Graveyard – 00:45 – An unknown observer secretly records Melissa’s graveyard encounter with Carter.

Chapter 3 – Picking the Lock – 19:35 – The anonymous broadcaster reiterates his message to the viewer. Security camera footage shows Melissa purchasing items from Upton Hardware, where Mike Cole works behind the counter. Mike watches Melissa leave and becomes visibly upset. Over text message chat, Melissa tells Holly about her graveyard encounter with Carter. She also shows Holly a picture taken of someone in a hoodie stalking her outside the Strogue house. Melissa tells Holly that she plans to enter the locked bedroom to find out what her mother is trying to tell her. In her own bedroom later, Melissa notices the camera recording her once again. As Melissa rises from the bed, the specter of a pale goth girl dressed in black briefly appears behind her.* Melissa’s father Jack calls and tries leaving another voicemail, but Melissa picks up the phone. After Jack reveals that Mike Cole told him she was in the hardware store, Melissa informs her father that she is going into the locked room even though Jack tells her that he doesn’t know where the key is. For her next video diary entry, Melissa recounts her mother’s descent into madness that led to Katherine moving into a separate bedroom in the house. Melissa begins picking the lock, but is called to the front door by a visit from Mike Cole. While Melissa is away, a light turns on and a shadow is seen as a shape fiddles with the locked door from the other side. The light turns off just before Melissa returns.

*2nd viewing – The specter behind Melissa is not there when she gets up from the bed.

Chapter 4 – Mother’s Room – 22:00 – Melissa receives a cryptic voicemail from the ghostly voice about opening the door. Melissa video chats with her boyfriend Brandon about Mike Cole and picking the lock to her mother’s bedroom. A shadow appears outside Melissa’s bedroom again while she sleeps. On her next visit to the therapist, Melissa tells Mrs. Carroway about an episode of “Your Mother and Me” she DVR’ed during which the pale goth girl appeared onscreen telling Melissa to “open the door.” When Melissa shifts in her seat, the pale girl’s specter appears briefly sitting in the same chair.* Melissa finally opens the locked bedroom door. The door locks behind her, trapping Melissa in darkness. The dark specter appears behind Melissa before she opens the drapes to bring light into the room. Melissa finds a hidden panel in the floorboards beneath a rug. Inside the secret compartment, Melissa retrieves a wooden box with a strange symbol carved into the lid containing a small videocassette tape and newspaper clippings. The radio suddenly turns on andthe ghostly voice intones “out of the darkness” repeatedly. The pale goth girl appears from the television set. Melissa follows the figure around a corner where it disappears. When Melissa returns to the main bedroom, she finds all of the crucifixes from the walls arranged in a pile on the floor.

*2nd viewing – The specter behind Melissa is not there when she shifts in her chair.

Chapter 4.1 – A Roadside Burial – 01:20 – By the side of a deserted country road, Jack Strogue buries a wooden box similar to the one that Melissa found in Katherine’s bedroom.

Chapter 5 – I’m Not Crazy – 14:05 – Melissa reviews the contents of the box found in her mother’s bedroom and discovers a newspaper article about the bizarre death of Harding Middle School math teacher Ron Burger. She additionally finds an old photograph of her mother and Mike Cole with the pale girl. The girl also appears in a photograph with Melissa’s parents. Over text, Holly tells Melissa that she did not see anything unusual in the video of Melissa exploring the bedroom. Melissa sends Holly the picture of her parents with the pale goth girl from her visions.* Holly offers to find her dad’s old video camera so that Melissa can play the videotape discovered inside the wooden box. Melissa returns to Upton Hardware to ask Mike Cole about the girl in the photograph. Security camera footage shows the dark specter approaching down one of the aisles before Melissa leaves without an answer from Mike.* The specter appears next to Melissa’s bed while Melissa is out of the room. Meanwhile, Carter enters another trance while playing air guitar and says, “I’m free” in the ghostly voice.

*2nd viewing – The photo of her parents that Melissa sends to Holly is corrupted with the image of the pale goth girl’s specter. The dark specter also appears briefly in close-up on the hardware store’s security camera footage.

Chapter 6 – The Video – 13:55 – The anonymous broadcaster plays the contents of the videotape that Melissa found for the viewer. In the recording, Melissa’s mother attempts explaining what happened regarding the pale girl, but portions of the video are corrupted while Katherine intermittently becomes possessed. The ghostly voice says, “I am alive” while Katherine cryptically refers to a town-wide cover-up involving an event at the Maynard House and an overpowering evil. The unidentified stalker continues observing Melissa from outside the Strogue farmhouse. Melissa video chats with Brandon about what is happening to her. Brandon ends their awkward conversation by saying that they need to talk in person. Melissa’s father leaves another voicemail in which he reveals that Mike Cole told him about Melissa’s questions. Jack implores his daughter to wait a few days for him to come home so that he can explain everything to her. Melissa attends another therapy session. The dark specter appears intermittently across the street outside the window. Mrs. Carroway reacts suspiciously when Melissa mentions the Maynard House in conjunction with her mother’s video. After Melissa leaves, Mrs. Carroway looks out the window where the specter can still be seen in the distance.

Chapter 6.1 – While She Sleeps – 02:25 – Katherine records herself holding a cross over Melissa while she sleeps. Melissa’s father stands still in silhouette in the hallway. The pale girl then appears next to Melissa’s bed and frightens Katherine. Melissa wakes suddenly.

Chapter 7 – Mike Cole Pays a Visit – 13:55 – The unidentified stalker continues watching Melissa from outside the Strogue farmhouse. Melissa Googles “Maynard House” and learns that the home was abandoned in 1980 when George Maynard and his family moved to Upton to seek medical treatment for their daughter Amanda. Two months later, investigators found animal remains, bizarre graffiti, and evidence of ritualistic behavior inside the house. Holly agrees to accompany Melissa to the Maynard House on the upcoming Saturday. The girls’ video chat becomes corrupted by the specter. The ghostly voice mentions the word “cellar,” but Melissa is too frightened to investigate alone. Mike Cole pushes his way inside the Strogue residence and threatens Melissa over her questions about the girl and what happened at the Maynard House. When Mike becomes physical with her, Melissa cuts him with a kitchen knife. After Mike leaves, Melissa calls Sally at 911 who sends sheriff’s deputy Roy to talk to Mike. Roy finds Mike at home slumped over in his truck with a strange disfigurement on his face. Mike mutters, “dead is supposed to be dead.” A shadow passes outside Melissa’s bedroom once again. Melissa wakes suddenly from a nightmare.

Chapter 7.1 – 10-4 – 00:30 – Roy calls Sally to tell her that Mike Cole is crazy.

Chapter 7.2 – Static – 00:45 – The ghostly voice corrupts a radio broadcast while Jack Strogue drives his car.

Chapter 8 – In the Maynard House – 08:25 – Holly and Melissa visit the Maynard House and find Carter outside, although he cannot explain what compelled him to come. The video shot by the girls becomes occasionally corrupted by static and ghostly whispers. Inside the house, Holly and Melissa find a drawing of a demonic figure scrawled on one of the walls. Carter enters a trance, speaks cryptically in a possessed voice, and runs away. The figure on the wall then appears with a group of people surrounding it. Holly and Melissa find Carter in one of the rooms, still entranced and seemingly speaking to a presence in the shadows. Carter runs away again and Holly follows him. Melissa sees that the figure on the wall is now holding hands with a dark-haired girl. The image then disappears.

Chapter 9 – Beyond the Forest – 11:50 – The anonymous broadcaster addresses the viewer again. The pale girl’s specter appears in Melissa’s bedroom while Melissa is not there. Jack calls Melissa’s cell phone and leaves a message asking about her encounter with Mike Cole. Melissa revisits her mother’s grave and expresses suspicions that her parents and Mike Cole were part of a cult and whatever they did at the Maynard House drove Amanda Maynard crazy. Melissa sees the specter and follows it to a storm cellar door in the middle of a field, but is too frightened to break the lock. Over text chat, Melissa learns from Holly that Carter had to be taken to a hospital. Holly tries discouraging Melissa from continuing her investigation, but Melissa resolves to find Amanda Maynard.

Chapter 10 – Until the Devil Came – 17:15 – Frustrated with his avoidance and unsupportive behavior, Melissa breaks up with Brandon over video chat. Brandon sees Melissa’s feed become corrupted briefly. Unable to get answers from the townspeople about Amanda Maynard, Melissa forces Mrs. Carroway to tell her where to find Amanda. While asking about Carter’s condition, Melissa’s text chat with Holly is interrupted by an IM from Brandon. Melissa answers it. Brandon tells Melissa that her mother is trapped in the root cellar in the woods and needs to be let out. Remembering that she never told Brandon about the cellar, Melissa realizes that she is not speaking to her ex-boyfriend. Melissa visits Amanda Maynard at Turner Halfway House. Melissa shows Amanda the pictures found in the wooden box. Amanda says, “they were my friends until The Devil came.” Amanda goes on to reveal that the pale girl was Katherine’s sister, an aunt that Melissa never knew she had. The pale girl convinced the townspeople that they could gain powers like those she had by killing animals and eating their hearts, but all it really did was make the pale girl stronger. The pale girl made Mr. Burger’s flesh rot when he tried to stop her. Frightened, the townspeople conducted a final ceremony in the root cellar to seal the pale girl inside. Katherine and the other townspeople prayed continually to resist the pale girl’s spirit from returning. Melissa asks if the pale girl might be keeping Katherine’s spirit in the root cellar with her. Amanda says, “she always lies” and advises Melissa not to go there.

Chapter 10.1 – Cellar Door – 00:55 – Someone unseen records footage of the cellar door in the ground beyond the woods.

Chapter 11 – Melissa’s Gone – 13:25/17:25 – The police collect evidence at the root cellar and conduct interviews with Jack Strogue, Holly, and Brandon as part of their investigation into Melissa’s disappearance. Melissa’s final video diary entry shows her breaking into the root cellar and confronting the pale goth girl. A knock is heard at the anonymous broadcaster’s door while he implores the viewer one final time to seek the truth about Melissa’s disappearance. ATM camera footage shows Melissa walking by on the street, possessed by the pale goth girl. Melissa then dissolves into thin air when she walks away.

Chapter 11.1 – Epilogue – 03:20 – Melissa’s second-to-last video diary entry shows a message to her father about her plan to open the root cellar to free her mother and learn the truth.

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Review:

NOTE: Part 1 covers the iOS app that wraps the movie.  Part 2 covers the film’s content.

PART 1 – THE APP

“Haunting Melissa” is a feature-length “found footage” horror film presented in a serialized format as an iOS app.  Masterminded by filmmaker Neal Edelstein and produced by Hooked Digital Media, “Haunting Melissa” pioneers an approach to 21st-century digital distribution combining creative content, tablet technology, and social media into one overly cumbersome entertainment experience.

Divided into 11 primary chapters ranging in length from eight to 22 minutes apiece, the film is accessible only in segments, with each individual on his/her own “mysterious schedule” as to when the next chapter becomes available for viewing.  In this current tech-centric world of smartphone separation anxiety where a tri-tone is Pavlov’s new bell, the idea is to harness that kind of connectivity conditioning into a unique experience where push notifications excitedly herald unlocked film content instead of a new favorite on your latest tweet.

Edelstein and Hooked Digital Media are on the right track by being in front of changing trends in entertainment consumption, but they are riding the wrong train.  Media companies often operate on misguided plans that they dictate how content is acquired when the reality is that consumers set the standard.  It’s the hubris that crippled record companies when music fans graduated to MP3 while record stores fell asleep stocking shelves with physical discs.  Bullheaded Blockbuster Video was similarly too big to fail, yet lost its war of attrition to Netflix while playing catch-up in the mail-order media market.

Netflix was so far ahead of consumer trends that when they saw online streaming turning DVDs into dinosaurs, their attempt to spin off disc-based services as a separate business was met with widespread “we’re not ready!” derision.  Netflix was still wise enough to see TV series “binge watching” becoming part of the vernacular as well as habitual behavior, delivering their produced projects as complete seasons in one go while others held fast to the network notion of one hour per week spread over nine months.

Which is what Hooked Digital Media is doing perhaps without realizing it.  “Haunting Melissa” is presented via a fresh medium, but it still uses an antiquated mindset for scheduling.

Netflix changed TV delivery because the consumer evolved.  DVRs became commonplace in standard cable packages because people want to watch content on their own terms, whenever and wherever it is convenient for them.  Hooked Digital Media’s idea of creating anticipation with an iPhone message announcing a new chapter’s availability is novel, but people have real lives with jobs, families, and responsibilities.  The notion of stopping everything to watch the latest installment of “Haunting Melissa” is simply not a realistic expectation no matter the quality of the content.  It is somewhat admirable that “Haunting Melissa” wants to change expectations for how media is consumed, but it is not a practical method, and the staggered delivery timing isn’t even woven in as an ARG element.

By itself, watching a movie as part of a somewhat interactive app is not a bad idea, except “Haunting Melissa” goes out of its way to be as obtrusive as possible in a manner that no one could defend as user-friendly.  The first wall erected by the app is a hellbent determination to link to the user’s Facebook account.  Each time the app is opened, a prompt appears asking for permission to post to Facebook on your behalf.  Select “Don’t Allow” and you will receive the exact same prompt again two taps later upon pressing play for any unlocked chapter.  Select “Don’t Allow” a second time and the “Haunting Melissa” app will crash.  Every.  Single.  Time.  (For the record, I tested on both an iPhone 4s and an iPad 2 using iOS 7.1.2 and 8.1.2.)

Annoying social media prompts are hardly something that has been missing from the movie watching experience.  And when was the last time a film projector had to be rebooted?

Trial and error eventually taught me that to avoid constant crashing, I had to change my Settings to allow Facebook access regardless, though not necessarily permission to autopost, otherwise downloading new chapters was impossible.  After dismissing the first Facebook prompt upon starting the app, I’d back out of “Haunting Melissa” and turn off Facebook access again in order to thwart the second popup prompt.  Then I would have to remember to turn access back on again after completing a chapter so that I’d be able to download the next segment when it was ready.  This had become such a tedious procedure by chapter four of eleven, which took 20 minutes to work properly and that is not an exaggerated estimate, that I almost capitulated by finally granting permission to spam my Facebook wall so everyone who hasn’t given me a second thought since high school could know I was watching “Haunting Melissa.”

I watched Chapter One sometime around midnight.  As initially feared regarding the random unlock timeline, “Haunting Melissa” then woke me up with a message that Chapter Two was ready at 7:26am the following morning.  Not only was the serialized format being idealistic, but now the push notifications were being arrogant.  Are people truly expected to not go back to sleep, but to watch the next 20 minutes of a three-hour movie instead?  What about those preparing for work or school?  Who wants to watch a piece of a horror film in the light of day at the breakfast table or on the bus instead of while home alone in the dark?

I actually watched Chapter Two fairly soon after the message anyway, finishing at 8:17am.  Chapter 2.1, as in addition to the eleven main chapters there are seven chapter epilogues of short lengths between 30 seconds and two minutes, was then unlocked at 7:47am the next morning, just a half-hour shy of a full 24 hours later.  Chapter Three arrived at 8am the following day, with Chapter Four coming at midnight two days after that.

Provided that the user makes a “Haunting Melissa” autopost to social media after Chapter One, the first four chapters are free.  The film is so leisurely paced that nothing in those initial installments, particularly the first chapter, inspires an “I must have more” mentality.  Nevertheless, I purchased the season pass and migrated the experience from iPhone to iPad.

Migrating with me were new technical problems.  Despite all of my “Haunting Melissa” notifications being set with bright green “on” indicators, I stopped receiving push notifications when new chapters were available.  Maybe it was my punishment for a steadfast refusal to link my Facebook account, but once I was on iPad, I had to manually check the app three times each day to see if new content was available.  Generally, a new full chapter or mini-chapter arrived once per day, and sometimes twice.  With 18 pieces in all totaling exactly 180 minutes including end credits, it thus takes about 1-2 weeks to see “Haunting Melissa” in its entirety.

One of the app/movie’s other “hooks” is the inclusion of DSEs, or Dynamic Story Elements.  Upon watching certain chapters a second time, things might appear altered.  After viewing a chapter, I immediately watched it again looking for these differences.  In total, I logged exactly three of the 18 segments where something noticeably changed, although the DSEs are so subtle and minor that more may have gone unnoticed.  Two of these three instances weren’t actually additions, but rather subtractions.  A ghost that appears briefly in two of the chapters does not appear the second time around.  This means that the basic incentive to watch a three-hour film a second time is to *not* see things that were there the first time.  Why would anyone want to do that now?

The last item to note about the film’s format is that nothing about the story itself demands this presentation style.  2013 Dutch thriller “App” (review here) comes with a companion app for mobile devices providing users with a second screen that plays a pseudo-role in the film.  “App” is about a rogue, sentient computer app and putting the actual program in the audience’s hands is part of the interactive appeal.  “Haunting Melissa” on the other hand, is simply a traditional “found footage” movie about a haunted house and paranormal possession.  The telling is not part of its tale and the viewer is a passive participant, forced to watch silently as the screen displays text chats between characters without any active element giving users a way to be involved.  There’s no advantage to playing out on a handheld device, unless being forced to watch a movie piecemeal on a screen smaller than a Subway sandwich sounds like an ideal experience.

PART 2 – THE MOVIE

It’s been about a year since Melissa Strogue’s mother died following a religiously raving bout of dementia that saw her locked away in a separate bedroom, muttering to herself about evil.  Melissa’s boyfriend is at college.  Her father is working on the road.  That leaves Melissa alone with the creaking doors and ghostly voices inside the spooky family farmhouse in Kansas.

As part of her grief counseling, Melissa’s therapist tasks the young woman with recording a video diary.  That diary ends up documenting Melissa’s investigation into the weird whispers haunting her home.  What that leads to is a deeper mystery involving the truth about Melissa’s mother, the secret hiding behind a locked bedroom door, and an occult conspiracy binding Melissa’s strange hometown together.

The insurmountable issue for the film is that it unnecessarily pads itself with three hours of content to justify the rationed delivery format, not because the story requires the time.  “Haunting Melissa” confuses being vague and ambiguous as a means of generating intrigue and fascination, when what it really does is foster boredom and frustration by endlessly spinning its narrative wheels.

Chapter One features best friend Holly imploring Melissa to open a locked door leading to the room where Melissa’s mother Katherine died, but Melissa is too afraid to do it.  Chapter Two includes an encounter with an entranced boy whispering to Melissa in a ghostly voice, “open the door.”  In Chapter Three, Melissa has a phone call fight with her father Jack about opening the door, ultimately defying his wishes and deciding to break the lock on her own.  Except as soon as she starts lock-picking, a knock at the door calls her away and Melissa never gets back to it.  Chapter Four opens with a ghost leaving a voicemail about opening the door.  Later, Melissa video chats with her boyfriend Brandon about her lock-picking operation being interrupted.  The very first mystery introduced is this locked door and it takes Melissa more than an hour of the runtime to finally open it in an excruciatingly slow buildup.

Following in the footsteps of that taffy-stretching storytelling technique, certain static shots linger so long that you have to check the progress bar to make sure the video didn’t freeze.  Talking in circles is another trick for drawing out the script without actually moving the plot anywhere.  Opening the bedroom door leads to a new mystery, though one with a paltry payoff just as far away.

Inside the locked room, Melissa finds a videocassette recorded by her mother in which Katherine “confesses” to her role in a town-wide conspiracy.  That word is in quotation marks because “confession” is a term only loosely applying to Katherine’s revelations.  Melissa’s mother’s monologue includes phrasing such as, “I did what I did.  I thought it was right.  We didn’t think it was evil.”  That is two separate uses of the word “it” without specifying what “it” is.  Katherine goes on to say, “I realized that someone had to.  I think we all understood that someone had to.”  Had to what?  Her video concludes with, “but we all knew.  Everybody knew.  You have to understand that, Melissa.”  I’m sure Melissa would love to understand it, so would the audience, if you would just say whatever it is that everyone actually knew.  What use is a revelation video if the subject speaks only in cryptic terms?

By Chapter Nine, Melissa has a key confrontation in which she says, “what I’m guessing, what I can put together, is that … you all went there and you did something, or something happened.”  After 140 minutes, the most insight gleaned by the heroine over the course of her investigation is that “something happened,” though she still has no idea what “something” even is.  That’s how long it takes to not come any closer to putting flesh on the film’s skeleton of a story.

A chief challenge with the overly talky screenplay is that the cast is unequipped for adding texture to the words.  As Melissa, Kassia Warshawski is saddled with multiple monologues, each delivered with the same wide-eyed expression and high-pitched panting used for expressing fear, frustration, or any emotion whatsoever.  Melissa isn’t the only person vacant of personality.  Her father is either absent or aloof.  Her boyfriend is distant and unsympathetic, more than once insinuating that Melissa is crazy.  With dialogue so time-killingly empty, no one develops into a person worth investing any attention into.  Not that it matters much with a mystery whose most engrossing breadcrumb is that someone “did something, or something happened.”

Production design can be distractingly sloppy.  A NASCAR pennant cocked at an angle appears on the dorm room wall over Brandon’s shoulder like it is Riverdale in the 1950s, a telltale sign of a prop person’s hand, not a genuine college kid’s.  Melissa’s last name is misspelled several times as well, including in the name of the website shown onscreen to promote the film (although melissastrouge.com (sic) does redirect to the correct address).

Sketchy details hamper the narrative, too.  Melissa’s therapist has a ground floor office with an enormous window facing the street where anyone can, and does, walk by and peep who is lying on the couch.  A newspaper article later cites “an anonymous therapist” who can only be that same person.  How many mental health professionals can there be in a town so small that when someone calls 911, s/he refers to the operator directly as Sally?  And for reasons unknown, the voice scrambler used to disguise a mysterious video broadcaster changes pitch between chapters, making his dialogue in Chapter Three completely unintelligible.

Even an 80-minute version, which “Haunting Melissa” could easily be, would still bear a desperate desire for genuine suspense or thrills to distract from how uneventful the movie ultimately is.  For a story involving cult sacrifice, possession, and small town secrets, “Haunting Melissa” never comes across as sinister or as compelling as it should.

“Haunting Melissa” routinely feels as though more effort is devoted to showcasing the overall technical package than to selling the story everything is supposedly in service of.  The film is never frightening and the scares, limited to ineffective jumps like Melissa’s friend being startled by her mirror reflection, wouldn’t work on a large screen, much less one burdened by glare in the palm of a hand.

Gimmicky presentation aside, “Haunting Melissa” is unremarkable.  Indulgently overlong at 180 minutes, the film is in critical need of a Final Cut adept unafraid of the Delete key.  The delivery method might deserve an “A for effort” for being innovative, keeping in mind that innovative is not a synonym for revolutionary, but the content certainly is not.  You wouldn’t tolerate “Haunting Melissa” as a three-hour ho-hum horror movie in a traditional format.  Why tolerate it as a buggy app with a disruptive distribution schedule requiring countless mobile device restarts and popup prompt dismissals?

NOTES: A three-minute epilogue becomes available some time after finishing chapter 11.  There is also a 12-minute short film called “Haunting Ian” that can be found online and includes the Melissa Strogue character.

Review Score:  45

Click here for the review of the sequel, "Dark Hearts: The Secret of Haunting Melissa."

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