This is a fairly low-budget British ‘horror’ film (albeit light on the horror aspect), which Cassie (Christina Ricci) is a young woman knocked over by a car in the sleepy town of Ashby Wake. When she recovers, she has lost her memory and cannot remember what she is doing in the town. The woman who knocked her over lets Cassie stay with her and her family, and Cassie forms a bond with the young son, Michael. However, she is curious and concerned about the strangers who she keeps seeing in the town, but who seem oddly familiar to her, and she enlists the help of a man named Dan (Ioan Gruffudd). Meanwhile, a buried church is discovered underground, and various members of the Anglican church in the neighbourhood are anxious to discover the mystery behind it.
I watched this film for the sole reason that Ioan Gruffudd was in it. Horror is not really a favourite genre of mine, and religion is not a subject which would normally draw me to a film. Nonetheless, I actually found this entertaining enough, despite a few plot holes and unresolved questions.
Christina Ricci was fine as the lead character, although some of the choices that character made seemed unlikely. Ioan Gruffudd (who surely must have an ageing portrait in his attic, as he looks no different eleven years later than he does in this film) was also good as Dan – actually the best thing about the movie, from my point of view.
In all, while this film does present more questions than it answers (or more truthfully just leaves some plotlines dangling), it’s an undemanding, slightly hokey experience, and not bad if you are a fan of the genre, or any of the main actors.
Year of release: 2003
Director: Brian Gilbert
Producers: Patrick McKenna, Pippa Cross, Rachel Cuperman, Marc Samuelson, Peter Samuelson, Steve Clark-Hall
Writer: Anthony Horowitz
Main cast: Christina Ricci, Ioan Gruffudd, Stephen Dillane, Kerry Fox, Simon Russell Beale, Peter McNamara
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