Saturday Scream Queen: Brittany Murphy

Brittany Murphy described herself as "one of those show people" and stated in interviews that her earliest memories were of wanting to entertain people. She got her start in community theater at the age of 9, and by the time she was 13, she appearing in commercials. Television roles followed soon thereafter, and she easily made the jump to film.

Falling into something of a type-casting rut as a troubled or mentally disturbed teen, Murphy nonetheless managed to make a smooth transition from child actor to adult roles, perhaps aided by the fairly large amount of voice acting she did for video games and cartoons, or perhaps because she was "one of those show people," just like she said. Murphy also seems to have stayed clear of the party scenes and drug abuse that wreck the careers of so many young actors.

Murphy appeared mostly in romantic comedies and dramas, athough she did manage to work in a number of sci-fi movies, thrillers, and horror films, such as "Abandoned", "The Devil's Arithmatic", "Cherry Falls", "The Dead Girl", "MegaFault", "Deadline", and the yet-to-be released "Something Wicked".

Brittany Murphy passed away in 2009 from cardiac arrest induced by anemia and dehydration brought on by her attempt to self-medicate pneumonia with over-the-counter medicines. (Bizarrely, her husband died a few months later from the exact same cause. There's either a conspiracy theory or a horror movie script in that somewhere.)

'Deadline' needed more intensity, faster pace

Deadline (aka "Ghost House")(2009)
Starring: Brittany Murphy, Tammy Blanchard, Thora Birch, and Marc Blucas
Director: Sean McConville
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

A writer recovering from a mental breakdown (Murphy) retreats to an isolated house owned by her agent in an attempt to finish the script for a horror movie. She soon discovers the house holds a dark secret... and that she may not be alone. But is she being stalked by her murderous ex-boyfriend, a vengeful ghost, or phantasms conjured by her broken mind?

"Deadline" is a cross between the "writer goes crazy" sub-genre and the venerable gothic thriller where the main character is a psychologically unstable woman that is either out of her mind, or someone is trying to drive her there with a fake haunting. As far as that goes, it does a fine job in blending these two old-fashioned horror stories and updating them to current times with cell phones, lap tops, and digital camcorders. It also manages to keep the truth of what's going on with the writer and the house an open question up to the very end. And when the truth is revealed, it's not a huge shock to anyone familiar with either of the genres being fused in this film, but it is nonetheless somewhat pleasant that it ends up being slightly unusual.

But what isn't done well here is the pacing. Even at 85 minutes, the film feels slow and bloated. I understand that writer/director McConville wanted to establish the creepy nature of the house and to convey the sense of isolation and growing dread felt by Murphy's character as she roams its cavernous and shadow-filled rooms, but he didn't have to do it over and over and over. And the languid pace doesn't seem to pick up much even after the haunting begins in earnest; moments of horror are bursts of activity surrounded by more slow, nearly tension free scenes. The second and third acts of movies like this one need to be like a steel wire stretched nearly to the point of breaking, but here that wire remains mostly slack. If a total of five minutes or so had been cut from various places in this film, I think it would have made the difference between boring and horrifying.

As for the acting, the film is basically carried completely by Brittany Murphy. While she does an okay job--striking a nice balance between someone fighting for their life and someone who is having a complete mental breakdown--her overall performance seems to lack the energy and intensity that is required from an actor when they are by themselves on screen for the majority of a film. She did a far better job in the quirky slasher film "Cherry Falls" than she does here, perhaps because she had other actors to play off... or perhaps because of superior direction. It's hard to say, and we'll never know, because Murphy won't be doing any more slasher films or haunted house movies. She passed away in 2009.

If you're a big lover of gothic horror flicks, or perhaps a charter member of the Brittany Murphy fan club, this might be a movie worth seeking out. Everyone else can probably wait for it to show up on television where it may be edited and given the faster pace it needed.

Brittany Murphy shines in 'Cherry Falls'

Actress Brittnay Murphy died today from cardiac arrest at the age of 32. I only saw her in a single film, but she was the best part of it. In fact, she made a fairly mediocre slasher film into a thoroughly enjoyable experience.


Cherry Falls (2000)
Starring: Brittany Murphy, Michael Biehn, Jay Mohr, and Gabriel Mann
Director: Geoffrey Wright
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

When three teens are tortured and murdered in the small Virginia town of Cherry Falls, it quickly becomes evident that the victims are linked by two things: They went to the same high school and they were virgins. What dark secret are the leading citizens of Cherry Falls keeping that's getting their (non-sexually active) children killed?


"Cherry Falls" is a mildly suspenseful slasher-flick that's remarkable first by the fact that it takes a prime convention and turns it upside-down: The promiscuous kids are safe in this one... it's the ones that are keeping their pants on that are at risk; and second that the characters are actually intelligent. Only once does a character fall show traits of "horror movie braindeadness" where they go into a dark and creepy place... but it's in a spot where she has no reason to suspect that any danger could be lurking.

Good acting from an attractive cast--with Brittnay Murphy being particularly excellent--and some well-execute plot-twists go a long way to making this film worth seeing. It's not a masterpiece, but it's not bad either. It's low on bodycount as far as slasher flicks go, but what kills it does feature are brutal and shocking.