The Marsh

Delivery Time: 7 to 15 Working Days Format: DVD Imported: USA

Claire Holloway is a young, sophisticated author of a series of successful children's books. Her personal life, however is far from a storybook tale. Visions of violence and death haunt Claire. She is tortured by a darkness that seems to seep from the corners of her subconscious. In hopes of clearing her mind, Claire takes her doctor's advice to go on a sabbatical. She decides to stay at the Rose Marsh Farmhouse in the countryside, which looks suspiciously like the house she sees in her nightmares. Almost immediately upon arriving at the farmhouse, Claire is jarred by a series of escalating and unexplained happenings. She has plunged into a frightening world controlled by the ghost a ten year old girl the very girl that Claire has seen in her dreams many nights before. In her search for clarity, Claire is joined by Noah Pitney (Justin Louis), a charming and handsome publisher of the small town newspaper and by Hunt (Forest Whitaker) a paranormal consultant. Claire and Hunt start to unravel the village's dark secret.
The subtler scares work best in the Canadian-made chiller The Marsh, which stars a pre-Oscar Forest Whitaker as an investigator who aids an author in unraveling the mystery behind her terrifying dreams. Gabrielle Anwar plays the troubled writer, whose visions of a young girl in peril lead her to a remote town. There, the secret behind the disappearance of a local girl and boy--and Anwar's dreams--seem to be hidden behind the frightening façade of an abandoned house. Anwar and Whitaker are fine in their lead roles, but the film succeeds in raising the most gooseflesh when it tones down the blaring soundtrack and overwhelming barrage of special effects and concentrates on atmosphere and suspense. As it stands, The Marsh's mix of old-fashioned creeps and computer-generated flash is an uneven offering for horror fans. The DVD includes a behind-the-scenes featurette. -- Paul Gaita