It's The Shining before there was The Shining: a star-studded movie released in 1976, one year earlier than Stephen King's brick, about a writer (Oliver Reed), his wife (Karen Black) and their young son (Lee Montgomery) - oh, and Bette Davis as an aunt - who move into a holiday retreat (a summer rental too good and cheap to be true, not a hotel) and fall victim to strange goings-on - weirdness that probably stems from upstairs where the mysterious octogenarian Mrs Allardyce resides behind a closed door - but in this movie, the effect of this paranormality upon the family is just a whole lot of family bickering - whose dad hasn't played too rough with them in a pool? - and it doesn't just affect dad but first dad, then dad and mum, and then, weirdly, just mum who becomes house-obsessed - dad for some reason gets a reprieve - and then poor Bette Davis' aunt becomes ill...and all this not very scintillating stuff - fights then remorse then fights then remorse - never ends up making a word of sense, so in that respect too Burnt Offerings is very much like The Shining.
★★★☆☆
CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS
