THE HAUNTING OF JULIA AKA FULL CIRCLE 1977
The Haunting of Julia 1977 left a profound mark on me from the very first viewing- its spectral melancholy and chilling atmosphere lingered long after the credits rolled, unsettling me in ways few ghost stories ever have. Mia Farrow’s performance broke my heart; she embodies Julia’s grief and fragility with such aching vulnerability that I found myself deeply moved, even haunted, by her every gesture and glance.
This is a classical ghost story, yes, but its edges are disturbingly sharp, and its undercurrents of trauma and loss are rendered with rare elegance and restraint. The film’s hypnotic visuals and mournful score draw you into a world where sorrow and the supernatural are inseparable, and its shocking revelations still echo in my mind. It’s a film I want to explore at length on The Last Drive In, because its haunting power and emotional depth have made it one of the most affecting horror experiences along my journey as a disciple of haunted cinema and worship at the altar of vintage chills with classic horror cinema.
Versatile British filmmaker Richard Loncraine, acclaimed for his work in both film and television, known for his ability to move fluidly between genres, directs The Haunting of Julia (1977), also known as Full Circle. The film is a chilling meditation on grief, loss, trauma, guilt, and the inescapable shadows of the past.
From the film’s opening moments, The Haunting of Julia left me breathless- a quiet devastation settling over me like winter mist, each scene echoing with the ache of loss. The film’s sorrowful atmosphere did not merely stun; it reached into the hollow places of my own memory, awakening a personal ache and a sense of kinship with Julia’s grief. Mia Farrow’s performance is a study in fragile resilience, her every gesture and hollow-eyed glance resonating with the pain of a mother unmoored, searching for meaning in the aftermath of tragedy. The opening death scene of her little girl is rendered with startling realism, agonizing intensity, and harrowing trauma. It calls to mind the haunting prologue of Roeg’s film, where Donald Sutherland cradles his lifeless daughter, lost to the water in Don’t Look Now 1974.
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As the story spirals toward its haunting denouement, Julia’s journey becomes both tragic and bittersweet. In her final act, offering herself up to the spectral, malevolent child in a desperate hope of reunion with her lost daughter, she surrenders to the very darkness she’s tried to escape.
The film’s conclusion lingers like a bruise: a mother’s yearning transformed into sacrifice, love and loss entwined in a chilling embrace. It is a haunting not just of houses or spirits, but of the heart itself, where the longing for the lost can be both a wound and a refuge.
Adapted from Peter Straub’s novel Julia, the film envelops the viewer in a wintry, melancholic London where every corner seems to resonate with absence and the ache of sad memories, and every shadow hints at a restless spirit. Loncraine, whose career spans genres but who excels at evoking psychological unease, directs with a restrained hand, allowing dread to seep in through atmosphere rather than overt shock.
The film opens with a scene of domestic tragedy: Julia Lofting (Mia Farrow) loses her daughter Kate in a harrowing choking accident, a moment captured with excruciating intimacy and a sense of helplessness that reverberates throughout the film. This trauma fractures Julia’s life and psyche, propelling her to leave her controlling husband Magnus (Keir Dullea who is a master at being controlling in most of his roles – Bunny Lake is Missing 1965, Black Christmas 1974 and The Fox 1967 ) and seek refuge in a grand but somber house in Holland Park. The house itself becomes a character- a mausoleum of faded childhood, its rooms heavy with the residue of past lives, its silence broken by inexplicable noises and the sudden, spectral chill of unseen presences. Especially the malevolent spirit of a golden-haired child, her angelic face a mask for a soul steeped in malice, innocence entwined with the chilling sadism and cunning of a devil.
Loncraine’s direction is marked by visual lyricism and a painterly use of space and shadow. The score by Colin Towns weaves a melancholic, almost lullaby-like motif through the film, amplifying the sense of longing and sorrow that clings to Julia’s every step.
Mia Farrow, in a performance of haunted fragility, anchors the film. Her Julia is a woman unmoored, her pixie-cut and wide, searching eyes reminiscent of her iconic turn in Rosemary’s Baby, here noticeably breakable, as if she might shatter under the weight of her memories. Farrow conveys Julia’s grief in every gesture-her tentative movements, her soft voice, her desperate hope that the ghostly presence she senses might be her lost daughter. Keir Dullea is icy and menacing as Magnus, whose attempts to reclaim Julia are tinged with both possessiveness and denial. Tom Conti, as Julia’s friend Mark, provides warmth and skepticism, grounding the film’s more supernatural turns.
The narrative unfolds as a slow-burning mystery, with Julia’s search for answers drawing her into the house’s dark history. A séance scene, led by the unnerving Mrs. Flood (Anna Wing), crackles with tension as the boundary between the living and the dead seems to dissolve. The film’s horror is subtle and psychological. Appliances flicker on by themselves, a child’s laughter echoes in empty rooms, and glimpses of a mysterious girl in the park blur the line between reality and apparition.
Julia’s investigation leads her to uncover a decades-old crime involving a sadistic child, Olivia, whose cruelty orchestrated the ritualistic murder of a young boy, Geoffrey. The revelation that the house’s haunting is rooted not in Julia’s own loss but in the malice of another child gives the film its most chilling twist.
The cinematography in The Haunting of Julia, crafted by Peter Hannan, is central to the film’s chilling and melancholic atmosphere. Hannan bathes the film in cold, muted tones, making London’s wintry streets and the cavernous house feel both beautiful and oppressive. At the same time, wide shots of London and the camera linger on the house’s empty corridors, dust motes swirling in pale light, and mirrors that seem to reflect more than just the living. It all emphasizes Julia’s loneliness and vulnerability. Interiors are rendered with impressionistic attention to shadow and light, turning the house into a labyrinth of memory and menace, while the use of natural light and soft focus lends many scenes an almost spectral, dreamlike quality.
Close-ups reveal the fine details of faces and textures, drawing viewers intimately into Julia’s fragile world. Hannan’s camera captures foggy grays, blues, and earthy browns that evoke a sense of perpetual season of sleep with it’s quiet hush and emotional isolation, mirroring Julia’s grief and psychological unease.
The cinematography often suggests the supernatural without showing it directly, lingering on those empty spaces, mirrors, and subtle movements in the background, creating a tension that is more unsettling for its restraint. This visual approach, reminiscent of films like Don’t Look Now, allows the atmosphere of dread and sorrow to seep into every frame, making the haunting as much psychological as it is spectral.
In the shadowed heart of Julia’s new home, hovers the ghost of a golden-haired child; her angelic beauty hides a dark heart. Olivia-fair and delicate as a porcelain doll-once ruled the neighborhood children with a beguiling cruelty, her laughter a siren’s call that led the innocent astray. Under her command, games turned to rituals of torment, and the line between childhood mischief and monstrousness blurred until, one day, she orchestrated the ritualistic murder of a gentle boy in the park- a crime so unspeakable that its memory still poisons the air decades later.
The truth unspools in a scene heavy with sorrow and dread, as Julia seeks out Mrs. Rudge (Cathleen Nesbitt), Olivia’s mother, in the faded gloom of a psychiatric home. With trembling voice and haunted eyes, Mrs. Rudge confesses the unbearable burden she carried: realizing her daughter’s heart was a vessel for evil, she ended Olivia’s life in a desperate act of mercy, suffocating her watching as she gasps for air, hoping to silence the darkness that had taken root within her own flesh and blood.
Mrs. Rudge warns, “Evil never dies”– Olivia’s spirit, with her cherubic face and devil’s heart, permeates still, with a whisper of malice in every shadow, drawing the grieving and the lost into her circle of the damned.
Key scenes linger in the mind: Julia’s first, fleeting sighting of the ghostly girl; the séance, where terror is conjured not by what is seen, but by what is felt; Magnus’s death, as he is lured to the basement and meets a gruesome, accidental end; He falls down the stairs and fatally cuts his throat on a broken mirror pane, Tom Conti who plays Mark Berkeley, Julia’s friend, later meets a tragic end by electrocution in a bathtub.
And the film’s finale, where Julia, seeking communion with her daughter, instead becomes the final victim of the house’s vengeful spirit. The film’s pacing is deliberate, its scares understated, but its atmosphere of sorrow and foreboding is inescapable.
The Haunting of Julia is less a conventional ghost story than a study in the ways grief can hollow a person out, leaving them vulnerable to the past’s unfinished business. Loncraine crafts a world where the supernatural is a metaphor for unresolved trauma, and where the most terrifying hauntings are those we carry within. The film’s poetic terror lies in its restraint, its ability to suggest that what is most frightening is not the ghost in the shadows, but the ache of loss that never leaves.
