Esprit maternel

Joanna (Rebecca Romijn) and Ben Maxwell are a couple desperate to adopt a child, but her anti-depressant use is blocking them. Case worker Lydia Newman offers them a young girl from a troubled family. It's a sketchy situation, but her desperation wins out. Her mother is in long-term care struggling with dementia. This Lifetime TV movie is trying for the supernatural, but it's not visually capable. It really should fully invest into the horror aspect of the story. The filmmaking is not good enough. The genre work is not here. This is not in Lifetime's wheelhouse. The second half flip saps most of the horror energy.

Possessing Piper Rose or as it is sold in Europe under Possessed By evil is a perfect example of a TV horror movie. It do has all elements to call it a horror but it fails completely because it is a TV movie which means, the whole family could watch it. The story is simple and see, sigh, a thousand times before. Joanna Maxwell (Rebecca Romijn) and her husband Ben Maxwell (David Cubitt) are a new couple. The want their own child, David already has one, but it isn't possible to have it on the natural way so they adopt a child, Piper Rose (Isabella Cramp). Of course things are wrong with Piper. What we have next is that she sings strange songs, her mother appears as a ghost, supernatural things are happening, killers with big knifes are on the run, possessed grandmothers, in fact, everything a horror buff wants you will get in this flick but it becomes sometimes laughable because it is a TV movie. The grandmother becomes possessed by evil spirits (the mother of Piper) but her eyes (CGI) only changes from color. It is so low that even when a knife is flying through the air and cuts into the flesh it is all done off-camera and we do see the result but there's almost no blood to see that it is almost a spoof. Me, as a mega horror buff did laugh a few times even as it wasn't mentioned to be funny. And the fact that the rebellious son hates his stepmother and naturally loves her towards the end of the flick, well, you could have guessed it in the first minute. Even the last minute of this flick is so predictable that I rather thought that it was a comedy. If they had made it unrated well, this would be a hell of a movie but now, it's possessed by ....stupidity. Gore 0/5 Nudity 0/5 Story 3/5 Effects 2/5 Comedy 0/5