Marnie Watson (played by Famke Janssen) is a woman who killed her abusive husband, Mike, in self-defense. Or that’s what she claims, bnksut not everyone is eager to believe her version of the story, including police officer Lou Shanks who was a former partner of her husband. Yep, Marnie’s husband was a cop, and they can never be abusive, right? Hah. Marnie is placed under house arrest, and has an ankle bracelet fit on her which prevents her from moving more than 100 feet from the detector which is placed in the house’s hallway. If she does, the police will be notified, and that’s bad news for her, so better stay safe at home. Or at least she tries to. She has a delivery boy bringing her groceries, since she can’t go outside. Then, later at night, her husband’s face suddenly appears before her while she’s in bed. Terrified, she runs out from the bedroom, but her husband’s ghost pushes her down the stairs. She desperately tries to flee, and sets off the detector in the hallway, and Shanks arrives to find her unconscious at the front door. He notices that she looks beaten up, but she just tells him she fell down the stairs. They didn’t believe her when her husband was still alive, so there’s no chance in hell they’ll believe her now, so why even try. However, Marnie is now trapped with her abuser once again…
100 Feet is a horror film from 2008, written and directed by Eric Red (who also directed Bad Moon). It stars Famke Janssen in the leading role as Marnie Watson. While many ghost horror movies use its time to build up a mystery regarding the haunting and who the ghosts are, this movie goes straight to the point with showing the audience exactly what is happening here. It’s a haunted house/ghost story where you know very well who the ghost is. The suspense comes from how Marnie is totally trapped inside the house with her dead tormentor, which sets it all up for an interesting premise. In many ways, 100 Feet has some very close similarities to Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man from 2020, except here it really is a ghost and not some invisible mad scientist. I also found a little flair of Delirium from 2018, which was also about someone trapped inside their home in a house arrest situation.
Famke Janssen’s performance here is pretty good and carries a lot of the movie, where her actions and behavior comes off as convincing. While it may at first appear like she’s a cold-blooded murderer, which her husband’s former police partner obviously considers her to be, it also becomes clear that she tried multiple times to get help, including calls to the police which were quickly disregarded by his police buddies (of course). She was trapped before, but is even more trapped now. The only thing that hasn’t changed is that she knows no one will believe her, which means she must once again take matters into her own hands.
While 100 Feet never really becomes scary, there are some very effective scenes, where Marnie is both physically and mentally tormented by her dead husband. Some of the scenes where we can see glimpses of him are actually kinda creepy. There are some CGI scenes that get a little goofy, but there’s also a certain violent scene in the latter part of the movie which really catches you off guard with is severe brutality. Holy hell, did that just come out of nowhere!
Despite not exactly reinventing anything here, the movie delivers some creepy scenes, solid performances and a few twists and turns, making it a pretty solid supernatural horror movie.
Writer and director: Eric Red
Country & year: USA, 2008
Actors: Famke Janssen, Bobby Cannavale, Ed Westwick, Michael Paré, Patricia Charbonneau, John Fallon
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0899128/
