Translating a legendary ghost story to the screen, writer-director Courtney Solomon crafts a quality horror piece from strong performances and effects. The chief disappointment of "An American Haunting" is that it doesn't exploit more opportunities for the sublime subtlety of performances by Sissy Spacek and, especially, Donald Sutherland as parents whose home is besieged by a sadistic poltergeist. Based on Brent Monahan's novel "The Bell Witch" -- one of many books about the only U.S. case that officially attributed a man's death to a spirit -- the film uses a present-day framing device in which an adolescent girl is haunted by nightmares of an invisible intruder after discovering an old journal.

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