Audrey Rose is the kind of movie that makes you squirm in your seat—not because it’s particularly scary, but because it brings out the worst in all of us: a confused couple, an obsessed stranger, and a plot that spends more time trying to convince you of its premise than actually doing anything worthwhile with it. Directed by Robert Wise, who at this point must have been desperately searching for a reason to stay relevant, Audrey Rose is a film that poses the question: What if you thought your daughter was the reincarnation of a dead child, and then—surprise!—everyone else in the movie also acts like they’ve lost their minds? Spoiler: It doesn’t end well.
Plot: A Lesson in Bad Parenting and Worse Decisions
The movie opens with a standard-issue suburban life—because nothing says “we’re in a horror movie” like a perfectly ordinary middle-class family in Manhattan. Enter Bill and Janice Templeton, a couple who have about as much chemistry as a soggy saltine cracker and a cup of coffee. Their daughter, Ivy, is a perfectly normal child (or so we’re told), until one day a creepy man named Elliot Hoover starts tailing them. This guy, with the charm of a used car salesman and the persistence of a telemarketer, claims that Ivy is the reincarnation of his daughter, Audrey Rose, who died in a fiery car accident. Naturally, the couple dismisses this as a load of horseshit—until their daughter starts having inexplicable emotional meltdowns at the mere mention of a name that’s not even hers.
What follows is a series of increasingly absurd events, where Elliot essentially stalks the Templetons in the hopes of “reuniting” with his dead daughter’s spirit, which, let’s face it, is a questionable premise at best. But who are we to argue with a man who’s clearly emotionally unstable and is somehow immune to being thrown out of apartments? Meanwhile, Ivy, our adolescent protagonist, has all the agency of a paper bag caught in the wind.
The plot marches on at a pace slower than molasses, with Bill trying to keep things “normal” while Janice becomes convinced that Elliot’s weird behavior is just, you know, a normal Tuesday in horror movie logic. Eventually, things escalate, with a courtroom drama thrown in for good measure (because what says “psychological horror” more than a lawsuit over the soul of a child?). The film climaxes with a tragic and almost laughable series of events, culminating in Ivy’s death, because of course that’s how it ends.
Characters: How to Overreact to Every Situation
The characters in Audrey Rose are straight out of a horror movie acting 101 class—if that class were taught by a tired old professor who hadn’t seen a decent movie since 1962.
Marsha Mason plays Janice Templeton, who has the emotional range of a board game. She spends much of the film flip-flopping between “What the hell is going on?” and “I guess we should go along with this man stalking us because that’s just what women do in 1970s horror films.” Anthony Hopkins (yes, the Anthony Hopkins) plays Elliot Hoover, a man so obsessed with his dead daughter that he essentially stalks a grieving family for no other reason than maybe they’ll let him believe his dead daughter has somehow found a new body. Hopkins delivers his lines with all the restraint of a man who’s just been told to act “creepy but sympathetic,” and it’s truly a sight to behold. His performance, though admittedly intense, has the subtlety of a jackhammer.
John Beck as Bill Templeton is supposed to be the “rational” one, but all he really does is act annoyed at everything that happens to him. His major contribution to the movie is to repeatedly ignore the supernatural elements and focus on some ridiculous legal and personal battles, which makes him about as helpful as a screen door on a submarine.
Then there’s Ivy, played by Susan Swift, who does her best to be a believable child, but unfortunately spends the entire movie stuck in a catatonic state or screaming about things no child would scream about unless they’d recently discovered they were being controlled by demonic forces.
The Verdict: Let’s Call It ‘Psychological Horror for People Who Hate Thinking’
So, is Audrey Rose a great film? Not in the slightest. It’s slow, it’s tedious, and at times, it’s laughably bad. But it does succeed in giving you that sense of existential dread, mostly because you can’t figure out what the hell the movie is actually trying to say. Is it about the power of belief? The nature of reincarnation? The way people will go to absurd lengths to hold onto their dead loved ones? Who knows. Honestly, the movie does its best to confuse you and lull you into a sense of helplessness, but only because it doesn’t know what it’s doing either.
In the end, Audrey Rose is one of those films that you’d only watch if you were stuck on a plane with a broken entertainment system and a very low bar for entertainment. It’s the kind of movie that leaves you wondering what could have been, while also simultaneously making you thank your lucky stars you’re not in it. If you’re into weird supernatural tales with barely-there characters and a plot that has all the grace of a giraffe on roller skates, then by all means, give this a go. Everyone else? You’re better off watching paint dry—at least that offers a bit more excitement.
