The Lovely Bones

Suspense isn’t what Sebold was writing about, though, and no amount of desperate cinematic retrofitting will make it so. Neither was closure or revenge, which drove some readers batty. Instead, the story’s about forgiveness, reconciliation, moving on - qualities that don’t lend themselves to the epic commercial cinema Jackson represents. The director’s so far out of his element here that he makes one blunder after another, turning Susie’s little limbo pal Holly (Nikki SooHoo) into a childlike ninny, even botching the ghostly climactic resurrection that remains the book’s biggest stretch. (Jackson shows us the wrong character’s face and thus commits his own unseemly act of movie pedophilia.)