It's hard to say who is most responsible for the failure of this movie: the writers, the directors, or the producer. The premise was a reasonable enough variation of a familiar concept; the location was well chosen; the music wasn't bad; and I thought the pacing of the rising tension was O. K. On the other hand, it seemed that Jenny Agutter was the only actor who made an effort to create a believable character--Michael Moriaty is practically comatose--and from halfway through, the movie pretty much tanked. Horror movies always require a suspension of disbelief, but they still have to have some kind of internal logic. I had no idea why the disembodied spirit was harming the people it did, nor why it didn't simply visit the same kind of harm on the person it was supposedly after. I mean, hey, if you can possess one person and make him act contrary to his usual nature, why wouldn't you do that to other people? The decision to make the spirit visible near the end of the film was a particularly awful choice: the spirit that had before seemed at least somewhat scary immediately became completely laughable. My two stars are mainly for Agutter's game effort in a losing cause.
Review of Dark Tower
