Trigger Warning

Film: The Entity
Format: Internet video on Fire!

When I started this blog all the way back at the tail end of 2009 (Jesus…2009. I was young-ish once), one of the decisions I made was that any reviews I posted would come from watching the film, even in cases where I had seen the film a bunch of times. I didn’t want to rely on memory of a film, but address how I approach it in the moment of watching it anew. Opinions change, after all, and some movies don’t hold up--Stripes was a classic comedy film when I was much younger, and the last time I watched it, I barely got through it. There are times when this strategy pays off, though. Such a case is The Entity.

I was not a fan the first time I watched this. I think my problem with it was simple—it purports itself to be based on a true story and it deals with, essentially, a sexually active poltergeist. As someone who has no actual spiritual beliefs, the “based on a true story” angle for films like this frustrates me. It’s the kind of thing that dupes the credulous and makes them vulnerable to scamming. So, I had a bit of a grudge against it, and I held it against the film. It was a mistake; this is a better movie than I thought it was.

Before we get into the guts of this, it’s worth saying at the top that this is a movie that really needs a trigger warning. This is not a film where a woman is sexually assaulted by a spirit. This is a movie where a woman is repeatedly assaulted by a spirit. It’s the kind of thing that could very easily trigger a survivor of such assaults, not just because they happen, but because of the way in which they are filmed.

We’re going to dive into this right away. Carla Moran (Barbara Hershey) is at home with her kids Billy, Julie, and Kim (David Labiosa, Natasha Ryan, and Melanie Gaffin respectively). She is suddenly and without warning attacked and violated. When her son (who is much older than her kids) runs into the room, Carla is alone. She is attacked again, but escapes and she and the children leave the house for the night. The next day, Carla is attacked in her car, losing control of the vehicle as some force appears to take it over.

Carla ends up meeting with Dr. Sneiderman (Ron Silver), a psychiatrist, who thinks there is a much more mundane reason for these attacks. When Carla shows up again severely bruised and bitten, he is convinced that all of this is self-inflicted, despite the bits being in places where she could not conceivably bite herself. A little therapy seems to confirm his suspicions in some respects—Carla was molested as a child by her father, suffered trauma at the ends of her first husband, and was eventually abandoned by her second husband. While Carla is open to the possibility that this might all be in her head, she is attacked again, this time in front of her children. Billy tries to intervene, but is attacked by some sort of electrical discharge, and his wrist is broken.

The attacks continue, and Sneiderman, who hasn’t actually seen any of them, is convinced that Carla has some incestuous feelings toward her son, especially when she admits that the latest attack, which happened while she was sleeping, seems to have been one that she derived some pleasure from. Eventually, with more attacks that are witnessed, Carla is investigated by a few parapsychologists from a nearby university to attempt to devise a way to trap the entity that is attacking her.

The truth is that The Entity is a pretty effective movie in a lot of respects. There are a lot of similarities to Poltergeist in the sense of how everything plays out—it’s essentially a hard-R version of that movie where the person being attacked is the mom rather than the daughter. The attacks are very disturbing—there’s a lot of what is ultimately unpleasant nudity and a truly terrifying soundtrack that accompanies everything going on.

This is probably not a movie that I will want to watch again. It’s an effective horror film because of what it is, but it’s also the sort of thing that isn’t easy to watch. Sexual assault as entertainment isn’t something I tend to agree with, and it makes for a difficult sit getting through the film. If you can stomach that aspect of the film, it’s worth seeing, but it’s not one I’d want to see again.

And for what it’s worth, I don’t think it’s real. Whatever it’s claimed to be based on, I’m guessing that there’s a huge amount that has been fictionalized for the film.

Why to watch The Entity: That soundtrack!
Why not to watch: It should come with a two-hour trigger warning.