Seems this has been at least a critical hit, with plenty of reviews praising it to the skies. RT score of 89% and IMDB 7.4. What am I missing? I thought this was one of the weakest horror films I've seen in a long time, hardly meriting the classification of "horror". It was as scary as a bowl of lettuce. I mean, there was only *one* legit scare (SPOILERS ALERT!!!) when the mother is chasing Peter and she's banging her head on the attic door. It was long on *trying* to create creepy atmospheres and not even succeding in that - I was so, so bored watching this thing, wondering when the film is actually going to start - endless endless set up scenes which never went anywhere. Plus the filmmakers are under the mistaken impression that merely prolonging a scene imbues it with meaning and atmosphere - and nothing could be further from the truth; to make the length count, you need to intensify the psychological pressure - it's not enough to just keep filming long past when the director should have yelled "CUT!". Virtually every scene is prolonged in time without prolonging the tension, resulting in merely being draggy in the extreme. And you can see how draggy it is because the music is working heroically trying to infuse the whole sorry thing with a least a bit of tension, and the result is just overwrought. There is no dramatic tension, and music cannot substitute for tension, it can only augment tension that is already there.
The story didn't hang together, and whatever they tried to sell as a overarching story just wasn't involving. I'd say the ending was anticlimactic, but that would mean that there was rising tension that should have resulted in a climax, except there was no rising tension, it was flat as a pancake and just as long. Also really there was not a spec of originality in the whole thing - not a single psychological or physical effect or trope that we haven't seen before in horror movies, and done infinitely better. It's a Wonder Bread of a film - fluffy, gauzy, gassy, with no nutritional content.
The only thing they got going is come creepy looking actors (the sister and the brother both), but that's it. I give it a massive thumbs down, one star out of five. A total waste of time. Why was this popular? Beats me. As always IMHO, and YMMV.
The story didn't hang together, and whatever they tried to sell as a overarching story just wasn't involving. I'd say the ending was anticlimactic, but that would mean that there was rising tension that should have resulted in a climax, except there was no rising tension, it was flat as a pancake and just as long. Also really there was not a spec of originality in the whole thing - not a single psychological or physical effect or trope that we haven't seen before in horror movies, and done infinitely better. It's a Wonder Bread of a film - fluffy, gauzy, gassy, with no nutritional content.
The only thing they got going is come creepy looking actors (the sister and the brother both), but that's it. I give it a massive thumbs down, one star out of five. A total waste of time. Why was this popular? Beats me. As always IMHO, and YMMV.
