Frank LaLoggia's The Lady In White takes place in the year 1962 in a small upstate New York town. Here we're introduced to Frank Scarlatti (Lukas Haas), a nine year old boy who, like a lot of nine year old boys, is a little quirky. He doesn't seem to quite fit in with the other kids and it's safe to describe him as a bit of an outsider. Frank ‘escapes' by putting his vivid imagination to use and writing horror stories in his spare time. He lives with his dad, a widower named Al (Alex Rocco), his older brother and his two Italian grandparents who spoil him just a little bit.

The story is set just before Halloween, Frankie's favorite time of year. He's pretty excited about the upcoming holiday but these hopes are dashed when two bullies lock him in the coat room at school. He can't get out and no one hears him. Frankie winds up spending the night in there, and it's then that he sees the ghost of a young girl. Shortly after that, a man whose face is covered in a mask enters the room and starts fishing around for something hidden in the duct work. He spies Frankie and almost kills him, but changes his mind and dashes out at the last minute. When Frankie's dad eventually finds him and frees him, he starts to wonder what the ghost he saw was really all about. As he starts digging into the history of the town, he learns that over the years more than a few children have gone missing. Frankie decides to put on his sleuthing hat to solve the mystery, but then there's the matter of the so called Lady In White, an apparition known to wander the streets of the town in the middle of darkest night… and a strange old woman named Amanda (Katherine Helmond) who might hold a key to help him unlock all of this.

This film is a little bit long but otherwise very well done. Some might complain about its pace, those who want their horror movies to move at the speed of light, but LaLoggia's clearly more interested in crafting rock-solid character development than he is in creating jump scares. Although this is very definitely a ghost story, its done in the tradition of writers like M.R. James rather than ‘jump out an go boo!' movies like the Paranormal Activity or Conjuring films. Those can and are a lot of fun in their own way but there's something more personal about the approach employed in a picture like this. The human element matters more than the supernatural element, though in a way they are inseparable. LaLoggia accomplishes this by giving the phantom(s) in his picture a back story, a reason to exist, and this in turn humanizes them. Where they otherwise might exist only to scare us, here we feel for them in much the same way that we feel for Frankie and for some of the other living, breathing characters in the film.

Those comfortable with the film's sometimes languid pacing will find much to appreciate about other aspects of the film. Aside from some very well written and entirely believable small town characters, the movie is beautifully shot. LaLoggia and cinematographer Russell Carpenter (who would later win an Oscar for his work on Titanic) do a remarkable job with the visuals. The fall colors really look gorgeous here and there are all manner of very nicely framed shots evident throughout the picture, some very impressive in their artistry. The film also benefits from an excellent score composed by LaLoggia himself. It fits the tone of the film, the way that it incorporates a child's perspective into the events that take place, quite appropriately. It gives the whole thing an appreciable warmth that's missing from a lot of similarity themed films and this makes the movie easy to like and somewhat nostalgic for those of us in a certain age grouping.

Performances are also very strong here. Lukas Haas is excellent here in an early role. He's completely believable as in the part, and he plays Frankie as smart, curious and brave but never to the point where he doesn't act like most kids his age would act in the type of predicaments he finds himself in. Katherine Helmond plays the eccentric old lady quite well, putting in a memorable turn, while Alex Rocco is just plain likeable as Frankie's dad.

It's definitely worth noting that this two disc release from Shout! Factory includes three cuts of the film. On the first disc we have the director's cut, which is the same version that Elite Entertainment put out on DVD. On the second disc we have an extended director's cut and the original theatrical cut. The difference between the theatrical cut and the director's cut is about four minutes, mostly made up by trimming a few scenes (Frankie and Ms. La Della in the car, the aftermath in the bedroom after the ghost appears, Angelo driving the Williams' home from church, Frankie and the typewriter and a scene where Geno gets his temperature taken). Those scenes are put back in to the director's cut, thus the slightly longer running time. As to what makes the extended director's cut extended, it's nine minutes of additional footage.

Viewers will obviously prefer whichever cut works best for them. The theatrical cut is definitely the tightest, the director's cut fills things in a bit more and the extended director's cut fills in even more, but the pacing isn't as tight in the longer versions. Shout! Factory has done the right thing by including all three versions, that way you can choose whichever option works best for you.

Video:

The Lady In White arrives on a two disc Blu-ray set from Shout! Factory in an AVC encoded 1080p transfer framed at 1.85.1 widescreen and it looks good for the most part. Some of the darker scenes have some minor crush and shadows can sometimes swallow up fine detail but the image is clean and quite colorful most of the time. Skin tones look nice, if ever so slightly orange, while depth and texture are quite solid if a little shy of perfect. Some shots do look a little bit softer than others but these are the exception rather than the rule. There are no noticeable issues with any edge enhancement or compression artifacts while a natural looking amount of film grain shows up throughout.