The Haunting of Helena (2012) Horror Tooth Fairy Ghost

  The Haunting of Helena (2012) - This Italian product from One More Pictures in Italy, has a complex plot with a twist ending that should make it a winner. Why it is not really a winner in my eyes will take some explaining. The plot is not to be complained about here. A young girl at the point of losing her first baby tooth gets haunted by a ghost who is looking to regain her own teeth that were pulled out in a horrific crime. The film does a decent job of feeding us the back story of Battista Greco a violent man who pulled all the teeth from his wife's mouth and left her to die in a closet. She, The Ghost uses the timing of little Helena's first tooth loss to start haunting the girl and her Mother Sophia. Now there have been a couple other instances where the plot of a vengeful spirit goes after the teeth of children. In Darkness Falls (2003) Falsely blamed for a couple dead children, a good woman is burned to death and her curse is to come and retrieve the last baby tooth a child in the town loses. If you don't look at her you are okay but...  The other is The Tooth Fairy (2006) where a child on vacation learns of the local tooth fairy myth but the myth comes for her teeth. This film is different enough in origin story for it to not seem like a rip off.
  The first act of this film is all about that haunting. Sophia (Harriot MacMasters-Green) and Helena (Sabrina Jolie Perez) move into an apartment after Sophie leaves her husband Robert (Jarreth J. Merz). This is a creepy old house with a creepy old man Mr Ferri (Paolo Paoloni) in the neighboring apartment. When Helena loses her first baby tooth her Mom tells her about the tooth fairy and plans to make the tooth disappear replace by a coin. When she attempts this the little girl is awake and says the tooth fairy already came. The mystery deepens when Helena is caught at school buying other children's teeth for old coins. She insists that the coins are from the tooth fairy and that she wants Helena to get her more teeth.  Mr Ferri fills in some information talking to Sophie about the murder that happened in the house. Battista Greco (Marco Fattibene) killed his wife after pulling out  and hiding all of her teeth. He locked her in a closet until she died. Could the ghost of his wife be the tooth fairy. There is quite a bit of spooky and the monotone music is sometimes overbearing playing stingers even when there is no reason for them. When the ghost arrives in the apartment and comes for teeth Sophie does what any normal people would do and flees with her daughter. It actually is a decently staged scene with a piano in the way and the creepy ghost closing in. We are a third of the way through the movie and this is a major climax. Through out the film the music is scary serious and because of it there is this pall over the whole film. It could be that I noticed the stronger music by Michele Josia, when it swelled but there really was very little action connected to it. It seemed more that a mood was being created and that mood was seriously ominous.
  The second act takes place eighteen months later in an adult psychiatric ward of a hospital. Little Helena has not spoken since the frightening events and Mom is naturally so concerned that hospitalizing her seemed necessary. In this act we have a horrible trope come to life, where we are asked to consider if Sofie is actually a crazy person and all of this is in her head. To get there the Writer/Director Christian Bisceglia in a shared directing credit with Ascanio Malgarini brings back Robert to be the antagonist, being absent on all this time he really only serves to question his former wife's sanity. When Sofie calls him an asshole he responds "I would rather be an asshole than be crazy". It is not clear whether Sofie is a patient too or just staying with her daughter. She is seeing a psychiatrist who adds to the theme around her sanity, revealing that Sofie's Mother killed herself in a psychiatric hospital. This section culminates with her doubting herself "I might be the fairy?"  The end of the act has a great reference to Poltergeist (1982) when Sofie and Helena are watching television and the screen goes to static, and Helena says "She's back Mom."
  The final act not only clears up Sofie's bad relationship but fills in the all the details of the crime that created the tooth fairy ghost. Robert probably should not have stayed around and I'll leave it to your imagination as to why. There is a full story here so be prepared for a long climax where we learn to get rid of the ghost Sofie has to find her teeth for her, not any teeth will do. This draws her back to the apartment building and creepy Mr Ferri oh but there is so much more. Several really effective scare scenes featuring the little girl and her father actually make this film interesting. after what you think is the films climax you get a twisty twist that takes the film in another direction. I won't spoil that here since this is one of those films on the fine line of a recommendation. There are drawbacks though, something about the single tone of the music and the pacing of the directing make the film feel slower than the plot development would make you think it should be. The cinematography by Antonello Emidi is pretty stagnant also it seems to be stationary most all the time. This could be the director's call so I would not put it totally on him. He is an experience technician with a varied list of credits on IMDB.  Listen I am not an expert at this stuff but there is just something a bit off in the presentation. So I am on the line about this film, I found it to be a bit less than I hoped but there are things in it of real horror value. You make the call.