BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

Taraparain Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Izzy Adkins The movie is surprisingly subdued in its pacing, its characterizations, and its go-for-broke sensibilities.

HFX2030 ... of how screen writers, casting angencies, exposure units, cameramen, cutter and directors can fail. The plot is just miserable meaningless, so i believe the script was once hidden in the "Room of Requirements" by a young Alfred Hitchcock with intension to hide it to future audiences and save them from wasting their time and money! As i am writing a review on this title, this somehow went terrbily wrong. Sometimes films with goofy plots can still be saved by good acting or at least by creating a remarkeble feeling to the viewer. Unfortunately all characters (including supporting actors) were miscasted. None of the casted actors go very well together. I am absolutely positive the caster was a one-eyed drunken pirate.As if this wasn't bad enough, the exposure and cutting disturbs furthermore. At one scene you see Maria and Mark at the kitchen table with a bright lamp above their heads filmed in "distance shot" - in "close up" you see shadows on their faces going mysteriously upside-down! Did the kitchentable turn into a lightbox or did the exposure guys accidently roll their joint with a page of the script? This could explain, why the camera starts hysterically shaking when someone is screaming. Almost unbearable!While watching this film for ten minutes, i wished an electricity blackout to happen at home just like in the movie. Unfortunately my better-half forced me to watch it till the end. She is for sure much more scary then this movie!

verne51 If I could give it zero stars I would. This movie is an unoriginal piece of garbage. It is neither scary nor suspenseful. I would say it's a very anti-climactic movie. I would recommend not wasting your time on this one. Once they do reveal what's going on, the movie ends without any scary, anything. Please please, go find a job in a burger stand and.STOP making crap movies. If I had paid Money to see this pile of garbage, I would really be irritated. As it is I want my 90min back. This movie is neither scary nor is it suspenseful. Anna paquine is a decent enough actress but isn't given anything to work with here. The writing is horrible and the lines childish. The entire premise of the weird Dr with a son he doesn't love, yet couldn't kill. Now he expects to use him as bait to get the wife to kill the family? It just doesn't make.sense. and according to their rituals rules, they don't have enough people to open the portal they're trying to open. It's just dumb dumb dumb. Save your time and money, steer clear of this piece of crap. I cannot believe they spent 10.5mil$$$ on this crap. It looks like high school drama class made it on the weekend for 50bucks and a box of donuts. TLDR: save your rental $$ and steer clear of this piece of garbage.

daggersineyes This is not a perfect movie but it's by no means awful or "sucky" as a few reviewers have so eloquently suggested. There is a lot here to like. Fantastic cinematography, good direction (for the most part), interesting story line (or at least it starts off interesting) and some great acting, especially from Anna Paquin. For the first half I was really engrossed and enjoying the film and thinking this would be one of my higher scoring reviews but then something happened and I disconnected from it. I remember thinking well this movie is really well done and I feel all the tension and suspense etc but something isn't quite right. And I'm still not 100% sure what that something is.Part of the problem was the last half of the movie seemed to be a bit of a mess. At times it seemed badly edited, disjointed and rushed. I couldn't understand half of what was being said, which is a shame because there were some not very entertaining but important plot explanations buried in that muddy audio. I have to agree with others here that the ending, at least in the cut version, is a hard to follow and rather abrupt and anti-climactic. The bit where the scene keeps switching between Reggie/Grandfather, Mom & kid, Dad, bloke with the cane etc.... were just too jumbled and very difficult to work out what was going on. At that point the film slid into "silly" when before that it had been sophisticated and convincing. The father character seemed to become too over the top to the point of ridiculous. The mother's complete disconnect from her family was a bit hard to come at too even from the start. Maybe there was a backstory to her bizarre behaviour. I think it might have helped to have developed her character a bit more. Even showing her at her workplace to give her some context. (where did she work anyway??) Anna & the kid brother actor tried valiantly enough but it really couldn't pull itself back together in the final stages. I have since learnt that I watched the "cut" version which might explain why I found the last section of the movie so difficult to follow and erratic.Despite these issues, this movie is still a cut above the usual horror fare being regurgitated ad nauseum out there. There is almost no real violence and no gore at all but it's very creepy & suspenseful helped by a good but subtle music score. (An aside: I had to laugh at one negative review (rant) on here that complained about the ONE scene that had a bit of blood in it because they "don't like movies with blood in them" and then claimed to be an authority on what makes a great horror movie because they are "a huge horror movie fan" *snort*).If you like movies where it's more about the build up of suspense and dread, a chilling atmosphere and tension-building through good direction this movie is well worth watching even tho it employs some standard techniques. If you like lots of action, violence, shocks and bloody gore look elsewhere. :) Hope this review helps you make up your mind about whether to watch it. For my part, I think this is a badly under-rated flick that could have been much better but is a great improvement over most of the average offerings in this genre.

maximtrickett Getting this out proved for me that there is such a thing as false optimism and if I were to say anything about this film it would be that I would have been incredibly disappointed if I had approached it even with a pessemistic view. The story in itself is atrocious, nonsensical and ridiculous to the extreme, making it hard to believe and hard to relate to from the start. The story spans across two continents and the Atlantic ocean yet somehow links back to the fathers childhood and .... oh I have no clue as to what was going on. Anyway a total disgrace poorly acting, proposterously written, laughably directed and accompanied by a stupid ending I can't rate this film any lower.WORST FILM EVER.