Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

Did you people see the same film I saw?

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Guy Cooley (Justin Theroux) moves to an old farm in Princeton with his wife Jeanne Cooley (Julie Delpy) and their two daughters, Molly and Lucy, to build eight windmills to generate clean power to the city. He was hired by the local Samantha Porter (Brooke Adams), who owns with her relative Jonas Dodd (Mark Boone Junior) the lands in the woods where the facility will be built. The Cooley family has a cold reception in town, and while voting for the approval of the project, the old woman Gretchen Caswell (Jamie Donnelly) votes against the construction with many followers and mentions the historic importance of the spot and the name of Martha. Jeanne researches and discloses that two hundred and fifty years ago, a girl called Lucy Keyes got lost in the woods and in spite of the efforts of her mother Martha Keyes and the locals, she was never found. When the ghost of Martha comes to the fields around their property calling for Lucy, Jeanne realizes that the legend is true and that there are many hidden secrets in that location.Something is missing to make "The Legend of Lucy Keyes" a good movie. The direction is too cold, and the acting is also cold and without any vibration or heart; Justin Theroux and Julie Delpy do not show any chemistry, forming a weird couple. The screenplay is confused, with Jeanne refusing to go to the mass because she misses Anna, but who is Anna and what happened with her? The deranged behavior of Samantha Porter in the end of the story has no explanation. The use of the smell of clam-bellies to keep ghosts away is unique and ridiculous. In the end, I found this B-movie an intriguing and forgettable entertainment. My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "O Fantasma de Lucy Keyes" ("The Ghost of Lucy Keyes")

Being based on a true disappearance, I think the movie did justice to the mystery from the 1700s. For an independent film, it had a lot less gore than most fright flicks and it is to be commended for that. Expanding the tale to solve the mystery may have been too ambitious a project for the director. However, I find the bittersweet ending to have been well thought out and fairly executed. I think the fear that the Keyes descendant felt should have been explored more in the script, but perhaps explanation for that was left on the editing floor. All in all, I felt it was a decent attempt at solving a centuries-old mystery in a manner that unfortunately, sadly still occurs in this day and age.

I'm from Princeton, so I know all about Lucy Keyes. And since this movie was filmed on site at Princeton (this was cool for me because never before could I point at a scene in a movie and say: "I went there yesterday" every other day), I recognized everything-but the people. All of them were hired actors pretending to live in the town, when I knew well that they didn't belong. But this was only a feeling one living in Princeton would get.In perspective to the quality of the movie; it was great. And it included quite a bit of background of the town, not just the ghosts: the clam bellies on the farm, and the windmills on the mountain. And although the actual legend as told in the story was off (Lucy went into the woods to follow her sisters to a pond without their knowledge, not blueberry picking) it was well told through the scenes of Jeanne's research. The frequent fade-ins and -outs became somewhat annoying, but seemed to heighten suspense. The acting was mediocre at parts, but that made the movie seem to be real, rather than obviously great actors doing obviously well-written scripts- life isn't like that. As for the whole plot, it was good, and maintained an amount of suspense, although a climax was never fully reached. As for the ghosts, they were creepy, but a bit inconsistent, and almost all of the cliché spook-scenes are used, so not much in achievement there.As for the ending, this was disappointing. I won't give it away, but it doesn't fit the story. If you've lived in Princeton and know the story, you will know that there is no solution to the mystery, and to place one there doesn't seem right.So, all in all, the movie was an exciting experience, with chilling fright-scenes, with parts of love, sadness, desperation, and comedy, too. But still, a bit of a let-down near the end.

I saw the film at the Sonoma Film Festival, and highly recommend it.This is a very effective and enjoyable combination of two genres: an adaptation of real history, and a thriller at the same time. It wasn't as scary as a Chucky movie, but plenty scary for me. The sparse New England setting and the sadness of the true story of the colonial family -- perhaps especially poignant if you are a parent -- created a haunted feeling that has stuck with me since. Delpy and Theroux turned in excellent performances, and Cassidy Hinkle as Lucy carried her role in a way that few child actors can.I know that the film has received attention for its use of HD video instead of film. As someone who does not follow film technology, I did not notice this either way -- which is perhaps a good thing. See it if you can.