The Skeptic (2009)

Review by Josh Felty



Paranormal/haunted house movies are a dime a dozen, you might say. Last year saw the release of Paranormal Activity, a coy studio bi-product of viral marketing and slick name-dropping that included the likes of Speilberg and involved public outcry for the wider distribution of a film that really didn't live up to all the hype. You can see the parallels with that movie and The Exorcist, in many ways; Friedkin's masterpiece was not the most arresting piece of cinema as much of its notoriety/infamy grew out of religious paranoia, paranormal tall-tales, and the involvement of the Vatican. Out of last year's paranormal maelstrom comes a film distributed by IFC Films, titled "The Skeptic". I wasn't wholly impressed by this one, which I'll get to a bit later, but I found its mere existence quite intriguing given the current climate in Hollywood. This one starts out quite formulaically as we're introduced to Bryan Beckett, a seemingly successful trial lawyer who has trouble believing his recently deceased aunt's home is haunted by spooks. Bryan's mindset is rationality at all costs; no room for pesky spiritual talk or god forbid, religious convictions. He's a by-the-book man of science, so to say. And it's no surprise that such a modest, cookie-cutter sort of lead character is portrayed by Tim Daly of Wings fame. Heck, Daly played practically the same character in Stephen King's Storm of the Century, a favorite of mine also with a paranormal motif. Daly is our generation's Robert Mitchum: an incredibly talented actor given the task of being utterly ordinary and boring. The perfect foil for the thematic circus that's thrown at him throughout this title. Bryan, apparently at odds with his marriage, moves into the big scary house and starts picking up on various signs that he's not alone. There's a locked closet with a crucifix tacked to the door, a locked trunk whose importance is whispered to him from beyond the door to the room he occupies, and various other clues just waiting to be stumbled upon. Perplexed, Beckett consults with everybody but the town's street-sweeper: his shrink, his aunt's minister, and (go figure) a skeptical professor/researcher for a fringe collective that his aunt happened to leave everything she owned, including the precious house. I probably don't have to reveal too much more without you already guessing how everything plays out. That's my biggest problem with this flick. I'm at least quite forgiving (if not too much so) if said work is at least entertaining on some level. I wanted to like The Skeptic, really I did. But it left me feeling cheated and dirty with its paint-by-numbers progression of events and transparent characterizations, none of which were saved by any of the plethora of cheap frights found throughout. It's worth noting that Zoe Saldana (Avatar), Tom Arnold (yes, you read that correctly), and the guy that does the voice for the Dodge commercials and several History Channel programs all make appearances in this, though their performances are truly forgettable. If there had been something more to the protagonist than fuzzy childhood memories and the whole "I can see dead people and they're trying to tell me things about the past" trope, I might have felt more emotionally involved. Of course, the thing I'm skeptical of is that such a thing existed in the writing of this stinker. The only redeemable thing about The Skeptic? That I knew the ending by the beginning of the second act.