Half Light - A Movie Review

What are you talking about? I just spent the whole day with him!

Half Light is a 2006 film. Following the death of her son, Rachel Carlson, a successful novelist moves to a small Scottland village. Hoping that she is moving on, strange occurrences happen. She is haunted by memories of the past.

Half Light is not the movie that you think it is. This film felt like it went through a story change halfway through. It is a creepy film. The writers should have fully developed the film so it could have been a more cohesive story.

Grieving the loss of her son, Rachel is trying to find herself again. Demi Moore is always wonderful in her connection to these types of roles. She was very believable. Traveling to Scotland, Rachel is only met with visions of the past. Not letting anyone get to her mind, Rachel’s persistence is admirable.

If the film chose which angle it was going to drive on, character decisions would have made a lot more sense. Due to what happened to their son, Brian’s (Henry Ian Cusack) motivation deserved way more fleshing out. He’s hardly in the movie at all.

Was the entire town in on the prank against Rachel? That’s never given a proper conclusion. What did Sharon (Kate Isitt) have against her? Did everyone that she knew feel bad for just Henry and not Rachel?

Until the middle portion of the film, I really liked Angus (Hans Matheson). All of his interactions with Rachel were sweet. More credits include Nicholas Gleaves, James Cosmo, Therese Bradley, and an assortment of characters in the town scenes.

Here’s where the film doesn’t make sense. So, Rachel is being gaslit by the entire town. They're making her see things that aren’t there and lying about what’s going on. The story had great writing, adding subtle depictions. As I learned, this is a film that deserves a rewatch.

For a while, this movie was taking a ghost angle, until it turned into a gaslighting story. Since her son died, why is she seeing him in ghost form some nights? Unless that’s a scenario Craig Robertson just decided to drop in the middle of filming, better attention should have gone to Half Light.

The story aside, it’s the ambiance and location that sets the film's tone. Robertson chose eye-catching locations for the film. I have never been to Scotland. Teasing viewers with gorgeous shots of landscapes, villages, and the ocean, this is a location viewers want to be in.

That is until the second half. The island becomes very dark with unfriendly eyes lurking on you no matter where you walk. The whole island becomes more foggy and gray. Blue skies disappear. I liked the idea of living in a lighthouse but the solitude was creepy.

In actuality, the film was not shot in Scotland, but rather in Wales and England. Filmmakers didn’t have the easiest time filming on the Island of Llanddwyn in North Wales. Aside from angry residents, winds were so aggressive that the immensity destroyed most of the sets.

After taking some time to think about Half Light, we don’t have a lot of gaslighting films. We always need to add more films on this topic to the genre. It’s something different. Why not base the entire film around this subject instead of including unnecessary horror angles?

I did feel shivers go up my spine during some crafty tense scenes. Its eerie tension and surprising revelation kept me watching to see how the story would play out in the end.