User Reviews

Firstly, this is well worth a watch, purely for some of the quite creepy imagery it portrays very well. Most of which seems to be borrowed from Japanese flicks like The Ring, Dark Water and Pulse - most of which have already been remade..

Unfortunately it's quite unoriginal and predictable. The plot is pretty much laid out on the back of the DVD and there are no real surprises.

What I liked was the imagery - from the very start there was a great rapid cut of disturbing imagery, including the what looked like Un Chien Andalou. There was also some great creepy imagery of dead people that would give Insidious a run for it's money.

The budget also limits the films somewhat. The location is never explained. We never really get a feeling of any of the character's personality in order to identify with them. The wife sounds European (Dutch?). It's never clear what the husband's job actually is - archivist?? at the start he displays the original film of Bunuel etc. to what look like high school kids? he seems to then take orders from the daughter in that Jack Dee sitcom Lead Balloon?. Oh and the police investigation is ridiculous to the point you wonder if it's supposed to be surreal.

Worth a look for the cinematography and some effective jump scares.

This is a good horror, and suspense movie, which is well shot, and has a truly good acting. This is about trauma, grief, and betrayal, mixed with a ghost story.

The location feel cold, isolated, dark, and unhinged as a man seeks to come to terms with the death of his wife under suspicious circumstances. There are no heroes here, just a man, and his son trying to come to terms with the devastating events that surround his family.

One criticism I have is the pace of the film. At times it feels weighed down by the content and story.

That being said, this is a must watch if you enjoy errie, and unsettling movies.

If David is not a member of the top 1% he is living a comfortable life in a big house with his wife and their young son. A two income household, invitations to parties, a vocation rather than a mere job, what could go wrong? Nothing, until his work leads him to a film taken in 1902, silent footage, of course, but this is not entertainment, rather it is film of either a documentary or more likely an official nature relating to a murder in his house. A man had stabbed his adulterous wife 52 times then dumped her body in the canal. How does this relate to David?

Well, his wife had been having an affair, and when she goes missing...

Her body is found, you guessed it, in the canal, but the pathologist is of the opinion there was no foul play.

Tragic for sure, but that would have been the end of things if David had kept his mouth shut. After the funeral, he researches the case; the deranged husband had not stopped at one murder, to begin with, there was the nanny, and of course, David has a live-in nanny for his young son. Oh dear.

The big question - is it all in his head? The police seem to think so; it is clear that in spite of the verdict the lead detective on the case believes he knows more about his wife's death than he is letting on, but when David tells him about the ghost, social services try to take his son from him. He defeats that attempt, but the police are still watching him, and not protectively either.

You have a sneaking feeling this is not going to end well for David, but although this is quite a good atmospheric film there are the usual problems with films of this nature, namely you never know quite what is going on, what is going to be dream or reality, and this can be extremely annoying. Here, he captures a ghost on film and shows it to his colleague, who sees it too. Or does she?

David (Rupert Evans, somewhat bland) is a film archivist who seems to be having some doubts about his marriage to Alice (Hannah Hoekstra) when he starts to suspect her having an affair with a co-worker. He also stumbles upon some footage at work of a murder that took place not only in his neighborhood, but in the house they share, and he comes to find that the gory deed was done by a husband driven insane by his wife's infidelity. When he confirms his own wife's tryst (in graphic detail) he starts to really go off the deep end… but is it demonic possession or just straight up insanity?

This movie does a good job at blurring that line between a more classic horror movie full of jump scares and a psychological thriller where you witness someone's descent into madness. You really aren't sure which is which for a vast majority of the movie, which really adds some interesting complexity to it. It has some of the same appeals of a possession/haunting movie — the idea that there's some malevolent force at work is terrifying. But the thought that maybe it's his own mind at work is almost more scary.

It's a fairly low budget film, but there were some truly scary moments done that didn't rely much on special effects — one in particular while David is Skyping with his son, Billy (Calum Heath), when a shadowy figure rose from the corner.

I thought it got a little repetitive at times, and the attempted romance from David's co- worker, Claire (the adorable Antonia Campbell-Hughes), felt forced and awkward. The ending was HORRIFIC, to say the least (those images aren't leaving my brain anytime soon), but I didn't think it really matched the rest of the movie, both in style and in graphic goriness. It was like it had this slow burn for 90% and then it ramped up to 100mph REAL QUICK. But the literal last scene I thought had a good amount of creepiness.

Overall I think it was a good blend of genres, and definitely a good amount of psychological creepiness.

I saw the trailer for this movie a few weeks , I thought looked really good and scary

I do think the trailer makes it look more like haunted house movie (which it was not) and scary .

I thought opening scene was strange way to start a movie, I thought rest of the movie was good .

A guy finds out that is house as history of murders, meanwhile he finds out his wife was cheating on him , while he went into the canal , as he heard it was haunted ( which had really good surreal moment )

Then his wife ends up missing and found dead near the canal, soon the husband. Think that him and his son are haunted by the ghost he saw in the canal )

I did not like the twist at all , I did see it coming , I don't think the movie hide It really well, But I really liked those scenes after the twist.

Good movie

Whether it's the unbelievably poor acting or the incredibly slow pace you can't help but feel something is lacking in this film. Possibly that it takes ages to evolve to something that could or should take about 20 minutes. Guy and wife buy house and have kid, wife starts having affair (yeah didn't see that one coming) wife ends up dead...this is where it starts to get wierd... There's pretty much no sadness from the husband or child and he spends more of his time freaking out over ghostly nightmares and visions regarding murder... So is this a whodunit? Is it a horror? Is it a thriller? Watch it and be impressed or bored to tears.

The Canal is a competent movie with a decent script and competent acting. The problem with this movie is that it tries to be too many things. Is it a horror? Is it a psychological thriller? Is it a movie regarding possession? If one views this expecting a horror movie then they will by sorely disappointed. I viewed this as a psychological thriller and I think this best describes this movie. There are not many scares and I know that the director was heavily influenced by the movie 'The Ring'(you will know what I mean when you see the movie).

The plot is your basic haunted house plot where a family David and Alice along with their son move into a house that was where a murder took place. The father murdered his adulterous wife, the babysitter and his children. Events start mirroring what took place previously. David finds that his wife has been cheating on him, thinks about confronting her but eventually blacks out, only to find that his wife has gone missing. Did David have something to do with his wife's disappearance or is there something more sinister at work? The lead actor Rupert Evans does a great job at portraying the father caught up in a web of fear, grief and betrayal. The supporting cast is good too. You wouldn't go to the cinema to see this. Rent this on DVD/Blu Ray or wait for it to come on free to air TV.

Jackal75

The Shining is a sure inspiration and influence on the story, we have also a married couple with a male child moving into a haunted home where a terrible murder once took place by a husband who killed his cheating wife and kids. David (Evans) gets the same taste of poison when he finds out his wife Claire is cheating on him and then she ends up dead in the canal, supposedly drowned. We get a fair share of psychological horror mixed with bits of a ghost story ala The Ring with some elements of found footage but in this case, David shoots those footages and imagines the ghosts.

Subtle direction on Kavanagh's part with creepy and eerie slow zoom ins and just plain fixed shots for an extended time and exquisite compositions layered with nice color schemes of blue, gold, and red and flavored with insane and psychotic violin music.

Constrained chills and scares are scattered well throughout the movie until the story goes full throttle towards the end with thrilling scenes especially in the canal where his abhorrent-faced wife Claire covered with mud and sewer stuff all over gives birth and chases David with his son in his arms.

The sharp editing and sound editing especially where they are used as transitions between scenes add to a lot of effect to the movie replacing the clichéd sudden jerks and bangs and appearances of certain things that is usually found and incorporated in horror movies.

David (Rupert Evans) works at the archives. He has recently moved into a new home with his family. Six second David is not keeping his wife happy. At work, he comes across some old 1902 footage showing that a murder took place in his house, a man killed his cheating wife. He becomes obsessed with killings and the nearby canal, seeing ghosts in every film of the house.

The film starts out a bit slow, and I suspected it was going to be a dud. However, it builds up and the ending made the slower parts worth while to stick it through. Good ghost story.

Parental Guide: F-bomb, sex, nudity...a little of each.

Let me save you a lot of time. The cop tells the husband "You know why everyone always suspects it's the husband? Because it's always the husband." Guess what? It's the husband. And you know it's the husband. Not for a second does any of the slightly supernatural nonsense make sense. Nor is his psychosis really explained. He killed his wife...but the ghost of his wife kills him? So we have supernatural/not supernatural....and then, the dad is suddenly some evil dude living in the wall who orders his five year old son to kill himself so they can all be together? YOU DON'T KILL OFF A SMALL KID IN THE FINAL 60 SECONDS JUST BECAUSE YOU FEEL LIKE IT. Oh, and just to make it more ambiguous, apparently, the woman "sees" the ghost son in the house at the end. I could barely get through this movie, but I thought, huh, really decent reviews, it's got to be worth this crippling slow repetitive garbage. The only reason I'm giving this a two is because the child was such a great actor.

Just another "boring white man loses his s*** and murders his family" movie. He had no personality, and the people around him were little more than mobile props for his manpain. Would've been at least a little more interesting if he hadn't been the killer.