3 hours ago
1
In horror, a hidden gem tends to stand out from the pack. It means that something truly creepy was captured on film. It can take the form of a creature feature that showcases incredible practical effects work or a paranormal story with an especially nasty ghost or haunting at the center of it. What Happened to Dorothy Bell? belongs to the latter, a deeply unsettling found-footage tale that brings its supernatural threat to the library.
Directed by Danny Villanueva Jr. (I Dream of a Psychopomp), What Happened to Dorothy Bell follows Ozzie Gray (Asya Meadows), a grief-stricken young woman that’s grappling with the death of her grandmother (the titular Dorothy Bell, played by Arlene Arnone Bibbs) and the violently traumatic experience that marked her as a child. One night, while playing hide and seek, Ozzie saw her grandma pick up a knife and do something no one ever thought her capable of. The story behind that event became the stuff of urban legend, complete with talk of a haunting at the library she worked at.
Ozzie wants to attempt to communicate with her grandmother, recording every moment of the process in the hopes of working through her trauma. What she finds is something that should’ve been left unbothered. Something that latches on and doesn’t let go until its victim is completely overtaken by its kind of darkness.
The moment trauma and generational trauma were invoked as descriptors for the type of movie Dorothy Bell wanted to be, skepticism reared its head. Just another horror movie about grief and pain that barely scratches the surface of the genre to sledgehammer in a singular metaphor. Thankfully, Dorothy Bell is not that kind of movie. A lot is owed to Asya Meadows’s performance as Ozzie.
Meadows approaches Ozzie as a person that’s straddles the line between instability and volatility, the kind that isn’t afraid to inflict necessary damage (in her mind) should it come to it. The only thing that gives her purpose is unpacking the memories associated with her grandmother on the night in question. There’s a strong sense she’s at the end of her rope, and Meadows finds ways to show how broken Ozzie is by turning the few moments of clarity she experiences into emotional traps she’ll spring on herself later on.
Villanueva Jr. lets Meadows’s performance set the pace and the tone of film by keeping Ozzie in front of the camera with frequency than in other found-footage films. A few clever tricks are implemented along the way that take advantage of this. It’s more evident in the supernatural sequences. The entity at the center of the haunting tends to mainfest whenever Ozzie’s talking to the camera, when she’s unaware of what’s behind her. It leads to some striking horror imagery that rewards those who like to scan the backgrounds in horror movies in case something unnatural is lurking about.
The same attention to detail and character work extends to the movie’s exploration of trauma. To start, Ozzie is allowed complexity. The movie isn’t merely trying to show how much darkness comes with grief and how utterly miserable it makes the people that experience it. It asks audiences to consider just how far we should go while revisiting our most painful memories, and whether journeying too deep into them leads to other kinds of Hells. It all works to make the haunting feel scarier, as if the darkness that Ozzie uncovers is out there waiting for all of us if we let our traumas draw the map to our emotional stability.
The library setting is especially noteworthy because of this. It’s portrayed as a place that can be as inviting as it can be hostile. Ozzie is surrounded by books that either contain relevant knowledge or outdated ideas that have long since been forgotten. It’s an interesting play on what we choose to remember and what stays tucked away in the dark (but still accessible) corners of our psyches. Villanueva Jr. uses the space well and finds depth in the building’s quietest spots. This isn’t the New York Public Library from the original Ghostbusters with its librarian poltergeist. This library’s ghosts are older and meaner.
What Happened to Dorothy Bell is a highly polished hidden gem. It deserves a spot in any of the upcoming end of year lists. Villanueva Jr. and Asya Meadows make found-footage movie magic with a serious story that truly wants to scare people. It’s trauma horror done differently, with more than just a single metaphor dictating proceedings. You’ll know what happened to Dorothy Bell, and you won’t ever forget it.
English (US)