Urban Ghost Story

As if drugs, violence, unwed motherhood, and neglectful bureaucrats weren't enough, the inner-city family in Scottish director Genevieve Jolliffe's flashy but ultimately pointless Urban Ghost Story have to put up with demonic possession. Twelve-year-old Lizzie (an elfin and eerie Heather Ann Foster) survives a drug-induced car wreck that kills her best friend, but in returning from her near-death experience she seems to have brought something back from the other side. When the city housing authorities fail to respond to her mother's complaints about noises and moving furniture in their project apartment, she calls in a tabloid journalist to investigate. Jolliffe seems to have taken cues from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining in subtly building an atmosphere of uncanny menace (illustrations from Milton's Paradise Lost are about the extent of the special effects), but after a promising start Urban Ghost Story proves more pedantic than haunting. Screens at the Copley Place Sunday, September 13 at 7:15 and 9:15 p.m. and Monday, September 14 at 1:15, 3:15, and 5:15 p.m.

-- Peter Keough

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Film Festival Feature Films

| With Friends like These | Digging to China | Monument Ave. | Rounders | Lolita | God Said, 'Ha!' | My Son the Fanatic | The Mighty | Shattered Image | Gods and Monsters | Xui Xui: The Sent-Down Girl | Without Limits | Clubland | The Inheritors | The Celebration | Urban Ghost Story | The Boys | Living Out Loud | Stuart Bliss | The General | The Kindness of Strangers | Dancing at Lughnasa | Central Station | The Human Race | Double You Street | Oberwasser -- By U-boat to America | The Witman Boys | The Cruise | Confession of a Sexist Pig | Melting Pot |

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More Boston Film Festival information, film descriptions, and show times

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