DVD Reviews
DVD Review: The Marsh
By Jeff Swindoll
Apr 18, 2007, 16:40 GMT

The marsh holds both a secret and ghosts as a young children’s author finds out when she goes searching for the cause of her nightmares.

What the back of the box says:
“Claire Holloway (Gabrielle Anwar) is a young, sophisticated author of a series of successful children’s books.  Her personal life, however, is far from a storybook tale.  Visions of violence and death haunt Claire.  In hopes of clearing her mind, Claire heeds her doctor’s advice to take a sabbatical.  She decides to stay at the Rose Marsh Farmhouse in the countryside, which looks suspiciously like the house she sees in her nightmares. 

Almost immediately, Claire is jarred by a series of escalating and unexplainable happenings.  She is plunged into a frightening world controlled by the ghost of a ten-year-old girl – the very girl that Claire has seen in her dreams many nights before.  In her search for clarity, Claire is joined by Noah Pitney (Justin Louis), a charming and handsome publisher of the small town newspaper and by Hunt (Forest Whitaker), a paranormal consultant.  Together, Claire and Hunt attempt to unravel the village’s dark secret and put an end to her sleepless nights.”

If you want to know the truth I was expecting a low budget crap-fest, even with the presence of Forest Whitaker.  However, I was pleasantly surprised that The Marsh wasn’t too bad.  Although, the title seems too simple to me and not really creative enough to make you think that the movie is going to be worse than it actually is. 

Actually, the marsh really doesn’t play much into the story as the title suggests.  I guess you’re not supposed to judge a movie by its title anyway.  True, the story is not particularly a new one and you just know that Claire will have had some involvement with the events that occurred in the house that caused the ghosts. 

However, there are a couple of jump scares and the makeup on the boy ghost I thought was pretty effective.  The show is well acted and no doubt is timed to coincide with Forest Whitaker’s recent win as best actor as The Last King of Scotland.  It doesn’t really rise to the classic level of Robert Wise’s the Haunting, but it comes a heckuva lot closer to the mark then the crappy remake of the Haunting did. 

The Marsh is presented in anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1) and is enhanced for 16x9 televisions.  Special features include a 26 minute behind-the-scenes featurette.  It seems divvied up like these were perhaps clips that might’ve been on the movie’s website, but I’m not sure. 

It has interviews with director Jordan Barker, Gabrielle Anwar, Forest Whitaker, producer George Flak, Justin Louis, and production designer Ray Lorenz.  Otherwise, there are only previews for other Sony DVDs. 

The Marsh turns out to be a pretty good ghost story that rose above my expectations.  The story is not exactly a new one and you’ve probably encountered the twists in other movies, but the performances make up for the familiarity of the story.  You may want to give it a try. 

The Marsh is now available at Amazon. As of yet, there is not a release date for the UK. Visit the DVD database for more information.