The Haunting of Molly Hartley
Starring: Jessica Lowndes, Haley Bennett, Chace Crawford, AnnaLynne McCord, Jake Weber, Shannon Marie Woodward
Director(s): Mickey Liddell
Producer(s): Jennifer Hilton, Jerry P. Jacobs
Editor(s): Zene Baker
Writer(s): John Travis, Rebecca Sonnenshine
Studio: Huntington Prep, Liddell Entertainment, 20th Century Fox
Release Date: October 31, 2008
Genre(s): Horror, Suspense
The film begins with a teenage girl (Jessica Lowndes) going into the woods to meet her boyfriend. He gives her an early birthday present, but her father shows up and demands that she leave with him. As they drive home she tells him that she will be marrying her boyfriend as soon as she turns eighteen. He breaks down and apologizes to her before crashing their car. Seeing that she is not dead, he kills her with a broken piece of mirror, saying he couldn't let the darkness take her. The film then switches to present day, and Molly's story.
Molly Hartley (Haley Bennett), a 17-year-old girl, is stabbed with scissors in the chest one day after school in the bathroom by her deranged mother Jane (Marin Hinkle). Although she survives and her wound is healed with only a scar left, she is still haunted in her dreams and hears things because of the frightening experience. Molly lives with her father Robert (Jake Weber) and her mother is locked up in a mental ward outside the town she recently moved to. Her father enrolls Molly in a new school to help with the trauma and start a new life. However, as her 18th birthday approaches, Molly must deal with both the stress of being a new student and with the continuing nightmares she has of her mother's attack. Joseph (Chace Crawford), a student at her new school, attempts to help her. However, Molly begins to display symptoms of the same psychosis that took control of her mother's life.
One night, her mother escapes and tries to kidnap her, but Molly escapes. The next morning she is cornered by Jane and discovers that she, and others who share her mother's concerns, want to kill her in order to save her from a preordained life as a servant to Satan.
It's revealed that Molly had died as the result of a miscarriage and her parents made a pact with the devil disguised as a woman to save her life. The terms of the agreement were such that the Hartleys would only have Molly until her 18th birthday, then she would belong to the devil. After her mother is accidentally killed by falling down to the floor and upon knocking her father out, Molly turns to Joseph for help discovering that he is one of them and has set her up by taking her to his house. Dr. Emerson (Nina Siemaszko) arrives at Joseph's house and tells Molly that she is also to be a servant of the devil. She says Molly can either kill her father to break the pact, or submit to the devil. She attempts to let her father live and not join the devil by stabbing herself in the chest with a kitchen knife in an effort to commit suicide. This attempt is in vain because the clock has already struck midnight.
The movie switches to a mental institution, where a doctor is talking to a woman dressed in black, later revealed to be a cold-hearted Molly. It is revealed that Molly's father has now been admitted to the institution; Molly casually smiles and says she will not speak to him, instead choosing to move on. Molly becomes valedictorian of her high school, and dates Joseph. She is seen leaving her high school graduation with Joseph in a limousine, after being told by Dr. Emerson (disguised as the school guidance counselor) that they'll "see her soon."