Review: Slick horror film ‘Bethany’ exploits its real-life terrors

It’s usually smart when horror movies tie their scares to something relevant, but when handled ham-fistedly, the results can be exploitative. James Cullen Bressack’s “Bethany” is polished, well-acted and filled with memorably disgusting images, but its portrait of a frazzled adult survivor of child abuse is ultimately formulaic and a little sleazy.

Stefanie Estes stars as Claire, who reluctantly moves back into her childhood home with her husband, Aaron (played by Zack Ward, who also co-wrote the script). Soon she’s experiencing what she most feared: traumatic memories of her domineering mother (Shannen Doherty), coupled with gory, terrifying visions of being pursued by something monstrous.

At its best, “Bethany” generates strong feelings of everyday dread, just from the way that everyone from Aaron to Claire’s doctor (Tom Green) runs her life, ignoring her very real concerns while urging her to get pregnant.

But Bressack keeps punctuating the palpable melancholy of Claire’s life with stock jump-scares. A pattern develops: A scene of mundane misery, interrupted by a flashback to some terrible parenting, followed by a cut to the present day and a shot of something icky that makes the heroine shriek.

Eventually, the meaning of “Bethany” gets muddled. What starts out as the story of a woman facing up to her past ends up as a crude delivery system for cheap thrills, where a real-world problem becomes just another button to push.

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‘Bethany’

Not rated

Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes

Playing: Laemmle Music Hall, Beverly Hills

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