Visions movie storyline. David Maddox consoles his wife Eveleigh as she regains consciousness in a hospital. Eveleigh recalls being in a fatal car accident that killed a child in the other vehicle. A year later, Eveleigh (now three months pregnant) and David prepare to reopen a vineyard they purchased in Paso Robles, California. The area’s top wine distributor, Helena Knoll, attends a party thrown for the couple. During the party, Eveleigh finds her muttering in a strange trance while alone inside their house.
Eveleigh begins suffering from nightmares and hallucinations and comes to believe something supernatural may be haunting her or the house. Eveleigh starts attending a yoga class where she makes friends with a pregnant woman named Sadie.
Sadie accompanies Eveleigh on a visit to the realtor, Glenn Barry. Glenn reports that the vineyard house has no horrible history but tells Eveleigh that she may wish to research prior owners, the Porters, for answers regarding possible paranormal activity.
Eveleigh’s visions intensify. Worried that her PTSD has returned and is to blame for her hallucinations, David and Eveleigh’s OB/GYN Dr. Mathison insist that she resume taking the anti-depressants she previously stopped due to pregnancy. Eveleigh reluctantly relents and the visions finally cease.
Film Review for Visions<-h4>
Sometimes, I wonder why filmmakers put such effort into turning out films that have been made over and over again. This competent 2014 Blumhouse production has a basic storyline that would have been old hat for a TV movie in the 70s, with the sole twist that the villain’s motive is lifted wholesale from a recent major French horror movie (which has itself been remade).
Director Kevin Greutert did well by a couple of the later Saw sequels and the underrated Blumhouse production Jessabelle, but here gets stuck with a script by Lucas Sussman (who hasn’t had anything made since Below in 2002) and L.D. Goffigan that laboriously works through its familiar story while heavily signposting the big twist – that the ‘paranormal activity’ plaguing pregnant protag Eveleigh Maddox (Isla Fisher) in the isolated farmhouse where her distracted husband (Anson Mount) is trying to start a winery are premonitions, not a haunting.
Various visions (and aural hallucinations) – a hooded figure, a knock at the door, a dropped gun, a bloody handprint, a bent wrought-iron bedstead, coins stood on end, broken bottles, even some shifted chairs – bother Eveleigh, who is neurotic after a car accident seen in the prologue leads to the death of a baby.
A whole lot of characters act in a dead-suspicious manner, starting with her impatient and unsympathetic husband (one of the most cliché-ridden roles in the horror handbook) and extending to a sort-of psychic wine distributor (Joanna Cassidy), an underwritten doctor (Jim Parsons) and a few glowering neighbours (the guy Eveleigh thinks is brewing meth actually runs an artisanal olive oil business in one of the film’s few honest laughs).
With all this, it’s relatively easy to peg the traditional chatty, down-to-earth best friend Sadie (Gillian Jacobs, very good) as a likely culprit. This is underlined by the fact that Eveleigh has only just met Sadie, who is also pregnant, and has an actual long-time best friend (Eva Longoria), who has no narrative purpose. Yes, Sadie is the mother of the baby who died and is out – as in Inside – to claim Eveleigh’s unborn child as a replacement.
There is a tiny bit of snake-swallowing that’s almost interesting as, during an intervention that turns into a home-invasion massacre in the climax, the heroine starts being prompted by her own prior premonitions to take courses of action that might get her through all this alive – maybe even changing her fate. John de Lancie is pretty much wasted in a red-herring bit, while Cassidy’s diva turn is miscalculated enough to derail the movie.
Visions (2016)
Directed by: Kevin Greutert
Starring: Isla Fisher, Anson Mount, Gillian Jacobs, Joanna Cassidy, Jim Parsons, Eva Longoria, Michael Villar, Bryce Johnson, Annie Tedesco, Roberto Sanchez, Jeff Branson, Elizabeth Rowin
Screenplay by: Lucas Sussman
Production Design by: Melanie Jones
Cinematography by: Michael Fimognari
Film Editing by: Kevin Greutert
Costume Design by: Leah Butler
Set Decoration by: Sandra Skora
Art Direction by: Hunter Brown, Eve McCarney
Music by: Anton Sanko
MPAA Rating: R for violence and some bloody images.
Distributed by: Universal Pictures (United States), Blumhouse International (International)
Release Date: January 19, 2016 (United States)
Views: 18
