THE HAUNTING OF JULIA

Mia Farrow moves into a giant, fully furnished London house after the death of her daughter and almost immediately starts finding evidence that somebody else’s dead kid may already live there. There are unexplained noises, séances, old photographs, mutilated animals, creepy children in parks and one exceptionally bad idea involving a bathroom heater. None of this improves her mood.

Released in 1977 and based on a novel by Peter Straub, THE HAUNTING OF JULIA is a ghost story for people who think ghost stories should be quiet, cold and deeply unpleasant. Director Richard Loncraine drains the usual haunted-house machinery of anything resembling a cheap thrill and replaces it with Mia Farrow wandering through enormous rooms while something terrible seems to be happening just outside the frame. With its chilly London streets, shadowy old house and creeping sense that the dead are never quite as gone as we’d like them to be, it’s just the thing to open the gates on another October of horror movies. Elegant, nasty and profoundly sad, THE HAUNTING OF JULIA settles in slowly, then follows you home.