The Haunting of Lisa (1996 TV Movie) User Reviews

Passable Suspense Flick

[sddavis63 · 5/10 · 10 August 2002]

The title of this movie is a bit of a misnomer. This isn't really about a haunting, at least not as I understand the word. It is, however, a passable suspense flick about a young girl (Lisa, well played by young Aemelia Robinson) who receives mysterious visions about the murder of a young child, and whose visions set in motion a search for the killer, who may also be responsible for other deaths and who may now need to kill Lisa to avoid being caught.

The identity of the killer is well kept as an open question for most of the movie. You eventually reach the point at which you can narrow it down to two suspects, but you aren't really sure who it is until it's revealed.

Cheryl Ladd put on a decent enough performance as Lisa's mom, Ellen, who shares her daughter's psychic-like powers. Criticisms? Well, the movie caricatures both TV reporters and the Catholic Church a little bit. Even given the aggressiveness of the media, I don't think they'd film a private conversation between a mother and her young daughter and play the tape on television, and I honestly don't believe that a Catholic priest (Father Eakin, played by Don Allison) would intrude on a family with no connection to his church and who are not even Catholic.

As I said to begin, this is passable - nothing more, really.

5/10

Not much in terms of haunting

[Vomitron_G · 4/10 · 21 March 2013]

Not exactly recommendable for die-hard horror fans, since the film offers a tame mixture of drama & thriller, with only the added supernatural element occasionally venturing into horror territory. Little Lisa (Aemilia Robinson) has, just like her mother Ellen Downey (Cheryl Ladd), psychic abilities. We're talking communication with the dead here. Her contacts with the other side will lead the good guys onto the trail of a very bad serial killer. Performances aren't too bad, but the whole film is just unremarkable, boosted by some very cheap special (editing) effects. A by-the-numbers supernatural-tinted affair for bored housewives from the nineties as its target audience.

Lisa Knows

[sol-kay · 6/10 · 2 November 2007]

**SPOILERS** At first we have this nine year-old girl, Jodie Fisher, found brutally murdered in a local park by a park maintenance man which is bad enough. It's then that little Lisa Downey, Aemilia Robinson, starts to get these strong feeling and later visions that leads her to the old and abandoned park tool shed where is sees a manifestation, together with an angle-like Woman in White, of another similar murder of a little girl some thirty years ago. It turns out that the two girls Jodie and the girl, who's remains are later found under the floorboards, who was murdered in the tool shed were both killed by the same person!

The movie "The Haunting of Lisa" is not all that different from most psychic movies about a person who can solve crimes with his, or in this case her, psychic powers. It's that the mother of the young girl Ellen Downey, Cheryl Ladd, as well as the grandmother and every other female member of her family have, or had, the same psychic powers. Ellan at first wants to keep her daughter out of the investigation of the Fisher murder knowing what it will entail for both her and little Lisa; unwanted and unbearable publicity. Were in fact later told by Ellan that her mother, Lisa's grandmother,was run out of town some thirty years ago when her psychic powers became known with the local and outraged townspeople accusing her of being a witch. Ellan doesn't want this to happen to her little Lisa.

We have the usual set of suspects in both Jodie Fishers and the missing little girls, found buried under the tool shed, murders with Lisa reluctantly using her "gift" of psychic intuition to help the police track down the killer. Ellan in the meantime is also struggling with her fiancée the towns chief of police Mitch Graham, Duncan Regehr,in trying to get him off both her and Lisa's back in using the little girl as a human bloodhound in tracking down the multiple child murderer.

There's a number of well placed false leads that has you so confused that by the time that the killer is finally revealed your still waiting for some kind surprise ending feeling that he's still out there. The killer himself is a real piece of work having had a very troublesome childhood, this all seen in a number of flashbacks, where he was made to feel unwanted by his step-father a gong-ho US Army Captain who almost beat him to death. The movie has a twist ending where the two murders are connected by a single strand of evidence, uncovered by little Lisa, that tied the two killings, and who committed them, together.

The best scene in the movie was when the killer finally came out into the open and revealed himself in what, in the almost unbelievable overacting on his part,has to be an Academy Award winning performance. Huffing puffing and sweating uncontrollably, like he just finished an 12 hour shift shoveling coal in a boiler room, the killer became so incoherent and crazy that he just about stole the acting honors in the movie with just that one amazing two minute opus.

Creepy, good performances by kids

[vchimpanzee · 3 October 2006]

In Haven Lake, Michigan, five years after her father Tom died, 9-year-old Lisa Downey is taken to the park by her mother Ellen. While Lisa is at the park, a groundskeeper makes a horrifying discovery--the body of a child.

Meanwhile, Lisa hears the voice of a woman who seems to be calling for help. She goes to a shed. (At this point, if you get dizzy on a merry-go-round, you are advised not to watch.) Eventually, a beautiful, angelic woman appears, with the most pleasant voice, advising Lisa that the killer needs to be found before there are more deaths.

Ellen works in the same building with Mitch, the chief of police, who she is marrying in several weeks. When she hears about the body, she is naturally upset because she doesn't realize the body has been there awhile.

Lisa tells the story of her vision to her mother. Unfortunately, a nosy TV reporter is right there with his camera to record the whole thing, and soon Lisa and her mother are celebrities with cameras and fans camped outside.

Father Edward Eakin feels the need to offer his help. Ellen and Lisa are not that religious, but Ellen reluctantly accepts.

Another body is found in the shed where Lisa saw the vision. The investigation of the murders begins.

Lisa continues to have visions. Scary ones. In one, a little boy named Buddy is upset that his mother is remarrying. His sister taunts him, and Buddy gets angry enough to kill. This vision appears fuzzy, with sound that seems to be coming from a distance. And it advances forward every few seconds, sort of like a camera I used to see at Radio Shack, where I would see myself in one location and then a few feet away several seconds later--I wasn't moving. A really eerie effect.

The climactic scenes just before the ending offer quite a bit of excitement, and we are kept guessing about what will happen and who the killer is.

Aemilia Robinson has quite a challenge here as Lisa, and she meets it very nicely. Corey Sevier is genuinely terrifying as Buddy.

I wouldn't recommend this for kids, even though it is primarily about Lisa and her abilities. The visions, even in the shed, are quite scary. Most of the time, though, the movie isn't so bad.

It's a standard TV-movie mystery, but the young actors make it just a little more.

Psychic TV flick

[Leofwine_draca · 4/10 · 8 December 2017]

THE HAUNTING OF LISA is one of those ghost story TV movies that were all the rage in the 1990s. Cheryl Ladd, the former CHARLIE'S ANGELS actress, plays the mother of a young daughter experiencing visions of a sadistic murderer at work in the past. The title is something of a misnomer as this film is about psychic abilities and subtle ones at that; the ghosts which exist are merely those of the past. Plot-wise, it's more of a murder mystery, as Ladd attempts (badly) to figure of which of the supporting cast is the murderer. It's pretty low budget and drawn out; not really my cup of tea at all.

An Enjoyable different sort of TV Movie...

[James McB · 7/10 · 11 August 2001]

This was quite a bit better than I was expecting. I watched it because it featured Cheryl Ladd who I am a fan of from watching Charlie's Angels. She is wonderful in this. It's not like quite a lot of the TV Movies, a American family drama, sometimes with other actresses from Charlie's Angels. It is quite a lot different. It kept me interested right up till the end, trying to find out who the person now after Lisa really is. A better TV Movie with great acting from all really.

"My Poor Buddy, What Kind Of A Devil Crawled Into Your Soul?!"...

[azathothpwiggins · 30 September 2021]

Cheryl Ladd stars as Ellen, whose young daughter Lisa experiences spectral visions (aka: she sees dead people!). Lisa sees a beckoning spirit, just as the body of a little girl is found.

When Ellen makes a gruesome discovery that's vital to the case, she's besieged by reporters and religious nuts. Lisa's visions continue, while the police investigate the tragic mystery.

THE HAUNTING OF LISA is an above average made-for-TV supernatural-thriller. While not overly terrifying, it does have a certain creep-factor going on. Ms. Ladd is quite convincing in her harried role, and her fans will love her in this...