Thursday, December 17, 2015

Carnival of Souls (1962)

Today's film is Carnival of Souls.  It used local actors and a tiny budget, and has a quaint charm.

It focuses on Mary, who is in a car that is drag racing. The car drives off the bridge and crashes into the water.  The cops drag the water but find nothing.  Later, Mary emerges from the water unharmed with no memory of what happened.  She then moves to to new town and finds work as a church organist. No matter  where she goes, she encounters a creepy man with a white face and black eye area. He appears out of nowhere to her.  She even sees a doctor, who believes these apparitions are a result of survivor's guilt.  Throughout the film, she is time and time again drawn to a mysterious building.


We find that the building was once a carnival, and now houses the souls of drowning victims.  Through this, we can easily predict the ending, that Mary actually did die in the water after the crash.  I think the whole thing was a dream right before she died.  Like she was sort of aware she was dead but not fully.  I remember having to read An Incident at Owl Creek in high school and it focused on this same issue.

Even thought the movie was very predictable and not very well acted, it had a genuine creep factor so I will give it a 5/10.

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