Are there any hidden treasure seekers out there? If so, Lady In White is a real contender. Draped in small-town mystery and glowingly photographed, it looks and feels like a Disney YA feature, but with a real dark undercurrent that should be of interest to fans of Hitchcock and David Lynch alike.
Lukas Haas from Witness and Brick plays Frankie Scarlatti, an adorable tyke getting his Dracula costume in shape for Halloween 1962. The sensitive boy lives in a Norman Rockwell-style New England community with his widower father Angelo (Alex Rocco), older brother Geno (Jason Presson), and comedy relief Italian grandparents.
A pair of asshole classmates lock Frankie in the school cloakroom for the night as a prank, leading to the lad witnessing the ghost of a young girl (Joelle Jacobi) murdered ten years before!
Young Frankie now has a mystery to solve, especially after the ghost follows him home and he discovers that nine other unlucky local kids have been knocked off in recent history.
Writer-director Frank LaLoggia received a measure of negative feedback for the overly campy and whimsical visual liberties he takes in Lady In White, but we must remember that the protagonist is a child, which is why some scenes are rendered with exaggerated magical details and others are seen through a dangerous nightmare lens.
The film’s era references hope for the future, with President Kennedy in the White House, but it also foreshadows both the struggle for human rights, and a near future assassination, when the school’s black janitor is circumstantially blamed for the murders, giving Frankie another compelling reason to find the killer’s identity.
If he can just stay alive long enough.
Lady In White is a rather unique specimen, a vivid childhood recollection, autumnal ghost story, murder mystery, and family tragedy that moves at a brisk enough pace to hold everyone’s attention.
Manifest some gratitude for this humble offering.
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