I was quite excited to see this movie, and a little scared, after reading the glowing reviews that are voted most helpful on here, and the very high rating (a 7.9 as of this time) for a horror. Unfortunately, I was massively let down.
The first hour of the movie or so was just following the life of a family that just buried grandma, nothing out of the ordinary, except for the characters at sometimes think they see something out of the corner of their eyes (but this wasn't scary and is just normal when mourning a lost family member). My friend and I were honestly wondering if we had wandered into the wrong movie. It was all drama, no horror and no mystery. It wasn't bad per se, just bland, chugging forward without much of anything happening.
Then halfway through some abnormal things do start happening and we briefly hoped the true horror would start, but unfortunately it then quickly just moved from the bland to the bizarre, showing things that just didn't seem to make any sense (and still absolutely not scary).
Performances were weak as well. Peter (Alex Wolff) seemed to have the emotional range of a cucumber, only ever showing either typical teenager apathy, or crybaby 'why are you hurting me' type of scared (no, true terror looks very different). Steve (Gabriel Byrne) was pretty bland as well, just sort of being there, and also unconvincing in believing his wife is just having a mental breakdown even after witnessing convincing paranormal effects. Annie (Toni Collette) was the best, but the problem here was she was just unlikable. I truly didn't care about what happened to her.
The story meanwhile was quite simple, pretty predictable and left some pretty big plotholes. At the end we're led to believe that the entire thing was pre-planned, but what about the accident? Yeah, maybe that thing on the road was planned, but everything else just seemed random. Also, the head coming off was totally unbelievable, that would never happen in an accident like that. Other things seemed very random as well, why did the fire suddenly jump to Steve? Completely unexplained and also failed to convey any kind of feeling ("oh, that guy burns? why?" was all the reaction it got from me)
In short, while the movie wasn't painful to watch, it was also completely devoid of any impact and I'll be forgetting about it soon. I would rate it at a 4.5 out of 10, but will vote a 1 star to compensate for the insanely inflated score it has currently.
The first hour of the movie or so was just following the life of a family that just buried grandma, nothing out of the ordinary, except for the characters at sometimes think they see something out of the corner of their eyes (but this wasn't scary and is just normal when mourning a lost family member). My friend and I were honestly wondering if we had wandered into the wrong movie. It was all drama, no horror and no mystery. It wasn't bad per se, just bland, chugging forward without much of anything happening.
Then halfway through some abnormal things do start happening and we briefly hoped the true horror would start, but unfortunately it then quickly just moved from the bland to the bizarre, showing things that just didn't seem to make any sense (and still absolutely not scary).
Performances were weak as well. Peter (Alex Wolff) seemed to have the emotional range of a cucumber, only ever showing either typical teenager apathy, or crybaby 'why are you hurting me' type of scared (no, true terror looks very different). Steve (Gabriel Byrne) was pretty bland as well, just sort of being there, and also unconvincing in believing his wife is just having a mental breakdown even after witnessing convincing paranormal effects. Annie (Toni Collette) was the best, but the problem here was she was just unlikable. I truly didn't care about what happened to her.
The story meanwhile was quite simple, pretty predictable and left some pretty big plotholes. At the end we're led to believe that the entire thing was pre-planned, but what about the accident? Yeah, maybe that thing on the road was planned, but everything else just seemed random. Also, the head coming off was totally unbelievable, that would never happen in an accident like that. Other things seemed very random as well, why did the fire suddenly jump to Steve? Completely unexplained and also failed to convey any kind of feeling ("oh, that guy burns? why?" was all the reaction it got from me)
In short, while the movie wasn't painful to watch, it was also completely devoid of any impact and I'll be forgetting about it soon. I would rate it at a 4.5 out of 10, but will vote a 1 star to compensate for the insanely inflated score it has currently.