The Nesting (1980)

Fairly tame haunted house flick about a writer suffering from agoraphobia who decides to leave the crowded city and go to the country, in hopes of relieving her phobia. As her and her boyfriend are out in the boonies, they come across an old, abandoned mansion in which our writer feels "drawn" to for some reason. After exploring the old house she feels this is the perfect place to write her new novel and cope with her mental problems. Never mind the fact that the place is run down, out in the middle of nowhere, plus the fact that she is a chick staying alone in a strange town never seems to cross anyones mind, let alone our phobic authors. Now I don't know about you, but to me that just does not seem like the best of ideas, you know? Anyway, unknown to her the place used to be a brothel in the forties, and all the "working gals" were gunned down in a mass murder commited by some of the locals. So besides mice, spiders, and crappy wiring, it seems there are some spooks about the place as well. Soon after some windows mysteriously crack, unseen voices are heard whispering, and other typical ghostly acts are commited, our writer gets the idea the place just might be haunted. Hmm....you think? "The Nesting" started out on a decent level, but there was one crucial mistake made by the filmmakers. For reasons I won't go to in depth on, for fear of ruining the "ahem" plot, early on the mistake is made by letting the viewer know that the ghosts never mean any real harm to the author. This pretty much took away all possibilities of suspense. I mean, if you know the main character is not in danger, why be worried about what will happen to her? In this case....you don't. Another problem I had dealt with the pacing. Certain scenes dragged on for way to long, the chase scene and the scene on top of the roof come to mind. To much plodding and not enough ghosts. This one is an ok time waster, though I can think of lots of better flicks to waste your short time on earth watching.