Haunter

I watched this on the strength of the star, Abigail Breslin, who I have admired since her knock-out performance as Olive in Little Miss Sunshine. She has since been good in other movies, too, most notably Zombieland. She is an adult now, albeit a pretty young one, and navigating the perilous straits between being a child actress and a grown-up one, a passage filled with the wrecks of young careers. So far she’s done fairly well, and I hope she will continue to do so. She’s one of those people you just instinctively like, and that should help her.

This is a small picture, a ghost story told from the perspective of a ghost. It will remind you a little of Groundhog Day, in that she and her family are reliving the same day over and over in a house surrounded by fog. She figures out that they are all dead, and she is the only one who has noticed it. Other shades appear, and she must eventually figure out what has happened to all of them, mostly young girls. I will say no more about the plot. It unfolds well enough, and makes a certain amount of sense, if you believe in ghosts. I can believe in them for the two hours of a movie, if they are done well. This is never going to set the world on fire, but it’s tons better than most of the supernatural dreck that is churned out direct-to-DVD for the gross-out teen audience.