REVIEW: The Haunting Of Alice D

- By Allan Lear

In last month’s review of Hush I made passing reference to the fact that horror, as a genre, comes in for sometimes-justifiable stick regarding its treatment of female characters. As though to suggest that Noel Edmonds is right about “cosmic ordering” and the universe supplies that which we demand, this month’s review is for The Haunting of Alice D, a film which I would show to Germaine Greer if I wanted to kill her with apoplexy.

Alice D begins with the backstory, set in the late nineteenth century. A young woman is being held in sexual servitude by a cruel old sod called Sir Davenport (Kane Hodder, minus hockey mask – he’s not subtle, but he gets the job done). Davenport, incidentally, is his surname, so possibly the reason he’s so grumpy is that everyone keeps getting his title wrong. This woman is working for him to pay off an unspecified family debt and also to prevent him from taking advantage of her younger sister, the titular Alice. However, as our story begins, Davenport is selling off the elder sister and planning to indenture Alice into prostitution in her stead. Alice, understandably someone rattled by this turn of events, chooses to top herself rather than put up with any more of the nasty knight’s nonsense, and thus the stage is set for a revenge haunting.

Flash forward to the present day. Celebrating a birthday party, some utter sleazeball has rented out the old Davenport manner and invited his two friends in the whole world to join him. He also brings tarts. Needless to say, this awakens the vengeful spirit of Alice D, whose long stint haunting a former cathouse has surprisingly not mellowed her on the issue of hired sex puppets. The inevitable consequences ensue, involving date rape, Evil Dead-style possessions, the whoremonger getting his just desserts and a rather lovely bird’s-eye shot of a helical staircase with a knackered corpse at the bottom of it.

In terms of plot and structure Alice D is serviceable but in no way surprising. It’s nicely filmed, it’s acted competently, and it’s as predictable as a boxing match between Tyson Fury and Jeremy Corbyn. There are a million worse films to kill two hours with and a million better ones as well.

But. Oh, but, but, but. Look, I don’t want to come over all Bridget Christie (as Rob Newman might say), and the last thing I want is to develop a reputation as some sort of joyless Guardianista. Sex ‘n’ death is a longstanding horror staple for good reason, and Leanna Quigley getting naked on a gravestone for no reason whatsoever was a joyous formative experience of my teenage years.

Be that as it may, it needs to be said: the gender politics of Alice D are baffling. I was surprised to discover that it had been written by a woman, Jessica Sonneborn, who also directs and acts. I was less surprised to discover that her only other writing credits are a duff sex comedy and an untitled thing about cheerleading. The moral message that this writer wants to send to men in Alice D is that vagina is not a commodity to be purchased; it is a prize to be won.

Of the prostitutes invited to the birthday party, one is a novitiate; long-time stripper, first-time hooker. She doesn’t want to sell herself but is desperate for the cash. Needless to say, she is the one who has a romantic interest, the man who is supposedly the least objectionable of our three protagonists. He is attracted to her at first but, on being informed that the ladies present are all paid for by the host, his ardour cools noticeably. Is he upset to find that the poor girl is being financially coerced to render herself available to him? Not exactly. “I don’t have to pay for it”, he says. His distaste for the girl’s predicament comes not from empathy but from his own macho pride.

And the girl persists in falling in love with him despite his bullshit, because the script wants us to think that this is a nice guy! “It’s a one-time thing”, she explains to him, desperate that he will not think less of her because he met her at a cash-in-hand sex party, “I just really need the money”. How does her knight in shining armour respond? “Get a job.” Well, no wonder romance is on the cards for this pair of crazy lovebirds. “I’m not interested in sleeping with you,” he flat-out lies to her, when it’s perfectly obvious that he is, he’s just not interested in paying for the privilege. When the romantic lead in your film is a devious, ungracious, self-absorbed dickhead, perhaps it’s time for a second draft of the script. In a film featuring a cameo from Al Snow, a former WWE wrestler whose stage persona was one long, convoluted joke about blowjobs, you wonder whether anyone was in on the gag (reflex).

Still, at least problematic films are interesting for being problematic, if for no other reason. As a state-of-the-nation piece examining the psychosexual pathology of the twenty-first century West, where modern ideas of women’s sexual autonomy are still struggling to beat back a faux-romantic paradigm where dashing Sir Lancelot deserves a shag for being brave, Alice D is an interesting artefact demonstrating our cognitive dissonance. Or to put it in a less pretentious way; when the girl finally kisses her hero (for free), even the most unreconstructed bloke in the audience is liable to shout “don’t snog him, he’s a wanker!”

- By Allan Lear