The Entity (1982)

Okay, so. Barbara Hershey gets raped by a ghost. It's sinister and unnerving and really, really works, between the bizarre industrial soundtrack (which basically sounds like a machine operating very loudly and in two-second bursts) and her appropriately horrified performance. As we learn more about Carla Moran's troubled past, a sexual abuse victim turned wild child who is literally unable to escape the ghosts of her past, the sense of mystery heightens. Her clashes with her psychiatrist, an unlikely alliance forged with a duo of parapsychologists, and her own financial and motherhood struggles promise a multilayered narrative full of conflict.

Aaaand it all goes downhill from there. She gets raped again. And again. In front of her kids. In her friend's house. She gets ghost-fondled while her boyfriend's around, in a scene which is quite clearly aiming for titillation, which is absolutely repugnant. I mean, really, did we HAVE to see her breasts being pushed upon by invisible fingers? I started getting the feeling more and more as The Entity went on that it was just a lurid B-movie, feigning its interest in Carla's psychology insofar as that it lets it film her getting raped some more. I think rape has its place in cinema as a narrative device, but this movie exploits that, and watching it started to make me feel really dirty. Even outside its potentially sordid intentions, the story itself absolutely falls apart. There's simply nowhere for it to go, let alone for two fucking hours. Her psychiatrist turns into an unbelievable douchebag, the kind you see in movies that is obtuse and stubborn and cruel solely to keep the plot moving. Her children become unimportant, her job falls by the wayside, and by the time we get to the ridiculous ending, nothing really seems to matter anymore. Apparently The Entity was based on a true story, in which case it was a terrible story to pick; if this is a cinematic sensationalization, I can't imagine how little there was to its factual base. Hershey's efforts are noble, but she can't buoy this, and after an intriguing first half hour The Entity flies off course. Skip it.