Morella (1997)

This movie was so absurd it was hysterical. Okay, its the near future and this genius geneticist creates a clone of her screwed up self before she dies. Somehow this clone becomes the child of her on job paramour (Guest) and then everything goes straight to hell. The clone (Sarah) does the typical Bad Seed faire complete with cloying choir music and jarring violins. Add to this the annoying preponderace of poorly lit sets and the occasional but pompous narration and you have a film that literally drains the life out of you as you watch. I wouldn't recommend it not even on a whim.

Morella is definitely not one of the big movies but never the less it is worth watching. Though the characterplay lacks some depth Morella captivates with the mood, scenery, the pictures however you might call it. The style reminds me a litle bit of the games "Silent Hill" or "Another Day in the Dark". Although the film plays in the early 21st century, it looks more like 1920-30 with a litle bit of 1990 laboratories-in-sf-films design and a few gimmicks, which come from the 21st century - a really nice and intriguing mix! The story is interesting and spooky though I don't know the original by E.A.Poe so that I can not say wether the film lives up to the story... Morella is definitely not a film for everyone. Lots will not like it and say it is boring because M is no popcorn-film and not for the great audience. But I enjoyed it...

This may be unfair because we only watched the first 25 minutes of this movie. I am the kind of person who NEVER turns off movies I've paid for, but this was a first. Not only were we so disgusted with the movie we turned it off not even half-way through, we went out and rented another to get the memory of this movie out of our minds. This was a great story idea gone very, very bad with HORRIBLE acting, bad camera work, and script caliber of no more than USA Up All Night.

This movie, based on Edgar Allen Poe's work, has some interesting points to it. It's an interesting play on the apocryphal theme of Lillith. It's a laudable attempt at putting a woman in the Frankenstein monster's role.Too bad it was so slow moving. The ill-lighting and constant rain suggests that the movie was an attempt at gothic moodiness, but setting it in an antiseptic futuristic environment undermines the emotional impact. This is a true shame, as Poe's original work had mood & punch.Nicholas Guest was disappointing in this movie, while the supporting actor, Robert Lipton did a much more convincing job. But the evolution of the story to a moralistic commentary on the current hot topic of cloning is a little heavy-handed and tiresome. Not easy stuff to work with.Some neat ideas, but generally, a failed attempt at bringing a strong Victorian work into the modern age.