The Valdemar Legacy is a story and a half, which isn't always a good thing. We start in modern Spain where a company has been asked to evaluate a Victorian style mansion immediately. It seems the last appraiser vanished and everyone assumes it is because he found something valuable in the house to pawn. The project manager reaches out to a woman who is supposed to be the best in the business and sends her to the house. Once there, she encounters an attic with a corpse and some shambling beast that attacks her. She escapes into the arms of the groundskeeper and his weird friend who has a thing for insects. Meanwhile, everyone has assumed the woman has gone missing and a private eye is hired to find her. The rest of the movie is the PI sitting on a train listening to a story from the turn of the century. This is the only finished story in the movie and it features Aleister Crowley, Lizzie Borden and Bram Stoker among the cast. It is the story of why the Valdemar property is cursed and how that came to be.
As the flashback story stretched on and on, I realized there was no way we were getting back to the present with the missing woman house expert or the private eye hired to find her. Sure enough, the movie pretty much ends saying "to be continued." The only full story is that of Mr. and Mrs. Valdemar, who run an orphanage and do fake spirit photography on the side. When their scam is uncovered, Aleister Crowley steps in to help free Mr. Valdemar from prison. All this is so he can perform an unholy ritual at the orphanage. It all gets rather silly once the ritual happens and we find out who in the house has a psychic link to a demonic entity.
At least that one story gets told. I was far more interested in the modern day portion that never gets resolved. To imagine, I am against seeing It because it is only half the story but I fell for this one. I can't recommend it unless you can find the sequel, too, which I can't.
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