Crew
Director/Screenplay/Production Design – Sasha Sibley, Producers – Sasha Sibley & Svetlana Sibley, Photography – Peter Bui & Lance Li, Music – Frederik Wiedmann. Production Company – Cadence Pictures.
Cast
Aleksa Palladino (Evelyn Elster), Sean Bridgers (Adam Elster), Jessica Ruth Bell (Janice Elster), Jadon Cal (Nelson Elster), Zara King (Lucy Elster), Caroline Scruggs (Cassandra/Succubus), Mike Ossedryver (Clive Franco), Patrice Johnson (Leonora Pettengill)
Plot
In 1968, Evelyn Elster learns that she has been made executor of her late cousin’s big old mansion, a position that comes with a salary. Her husband Adam persuades her it is a good opportunity and so they move in with their three children. However, once settled in, they discover that the numerous portraits around the house come to life with malevolent intent. Evelyn traces the history of the house back to her ancestor Clive Franco and how his wife Cassandra had him conduct a ceremony that animated paint so that it could transfer her spirit onto canvas.
The Painted was the second film as director for Sasha Sibley who had previously made the horror film The Box (2021). Sibley also appears to have made the basics of this as the twelve-minute short film The Painted (2020).
The idea of paintings that come to life is an intriguing one. There is a captivating prologue where we see a summoning spell conducted and paint leaping up to form on a canvas. However, as soon as we are introduced to the family and they inherit the house, The Painted starts to slip into the well-worn cliches of the Haunted House film. There are all the familiar tropes of the genre – the house with past and unresolved issues; the creepy apparitions (that emerge out of the portraits); and the one we have had since The Amityville Horror (1979) of the family under stress from issues within, particularly economic ones, that end up being amplified by the house.
Indeed, the sole novelty The Painted has on offer is the effect of paintings coming to life or seeing paints gain a life of their own and assemble on canvas – a similar idea appears with the living portraits in the Harry Potter films, although the effect there was more innocuous. The effects that go into creating this are not too badly conducted – although oddly, for some reason, whoever is responsible for the paint effects or any of the visual effects is not credited at all on the film. However, after about the fifth or so time of watching this, it is an effect that starts to lose out through repetition. There is the odd creepy effect like where son Jadon Cal gets his head swallowed up by one painting a la the tv set Videodrome (1983).
The Painted is an okay, not an awful film, and spends the time passably, even if you keep wishing it had emerged as a little more inspired. What it didn’t need is the possessed/zombified Jadon Cal running around in the latter sections, which seems to deviate off into a different type of horror film altogether.
Lead actress Aleksa Palladino is a name that has floated around on the edge of my radar before and has appeared in the odd item seen. (If anything, I am more impressed with Aleksa Palladino as a singer, in particular for her work as the lead in the haunting etherealwave duo Exitmusic). On screen here, with pale features and long untamed hair, she seems the ideal of pre-Raphaelite beauty.
Trailer here