I saw this movie a while ago. It was thriller/horror type thing, the name of which escapes me now, following the fortunes of a family who have moved into a house where a massacre once occurred. The father is a true crime writer, blindly pursuing the goriest of crimes, even to the extent of moving into a house where an entire family (bar the youngest) was brutally murdered. The wife, needless to say, is less than impressed when she finds out that the house has ghosts (literally). The two children, an early teen boy and a six year old girl, are variously affected by the strange goings on but seem to cope better than their parents.
The chills and thrills were really very good, and the movie had a good enough progression of mystery to make it worth watching. I kinda expected the grand finale that saw the family chopped to bits by the six year-old daughter (off-screen, of course), but the sound of a chainsaw revving to life to the accompaniment of six-year-old footsteps was sufficiently chilling to remain with me for some time.
It wasn’t until a day or two ago that the thought occurred to me: how in the flamin’ heck did a six-year-old kid start a chainsaw? Leaving aside the fact that the starter cord on a chainsaw is roughly twice as long as your average six-year-old’s arms, the start up process for every chainsaw I’ve ever met with involves pumping the choke three-and-a-half times (or something equally ridiculous) half-pulling the starter cord, a few more pumps to the button-choke, a few more pulls of the starter cord . . . You get the idea. A kid, even a possessed kid, couldn’t possibly hope to start, let alone hold, a chainsaw.
This is where things get difficult. I’m not sure if I have one point, multiple points, or no point at all. It says a lot for the movie that the impossibility of the main kicker didn’t occur to me until many weeks after watching it. So perhaps my point is that you can do what you like so long as you’ve managed to achieve suspension of disbelief. But I did eventually notice, so perhaps my point is that you should always make sure to dot your ‘i’s, etc . . . Maybe my point is just that if you do everything else well, one mistake can be, if not forgiven, at least indulged.
I don’t know. Make of it what you will. But if you have a six-year-old who can start a chainsaw, keep it away from me. I have enough of my own nightmares.
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