I loved the first 3/4 of this movie for its emotional depth as well as creepiness, which showed it had the potential be another "The Sixth Sense" in terms of a film that could both scary and moving. However as happens with so many horror/suspense films, especially those involving supernatural elements, the scriptwriter and/or director eventually abandoned the rules by which they were playing in favor of a conventional "anything goes" Hollywood ending, thereby robbing the film of its credibility and emotional depth.
(SPOILER ALERT -- SPOILER -- SPOILER -- SPOILER -- SPOILER -- SPOILER) In the part of the movie that works, the concept is established that people who have died can communicate with the living through electronic means, ranging from simple things and ambiguous such as turning electronic devices on or off to actual aural messages and visuals. The film nicely develops Jonathan (Michael Keaton's) passage from disbeliever to someone who has had his grief assuaged by learning his loved one still exists, then takes the further turn to show how someone could become obsessed with these communications, even to the point of ignoring the emotional needs of his child. It also raises the concept that the person receiving the messages may be so eager to hear them that they do not recognize the possibility the messages are being manipulated by someone with less benign intentions.
(SPOILER -- SPOILER -- SPOILER -- SPOILER -- SPOILER -- SPOILER) Eventually the movie veers away from the central concept (dead people communicating with loved ones) to include live people near death sending help messages about real-time occurrences, then further to include messages about future occurrences, which may or may not be avoidable. While some of this was definitely chilling, the film lost me when it broke the central rule (dead people can only communicate through electronic means) to allow the forces of evil to take on corporal forms.
(SPOILER -- SPOILER -- SPOILER -- SPOILER -- SPOILER - SPOILER) What is particularly irksome is that the film could have stayed within its rules and still put its main characters in physical jeopardy. For example, instead of having Sarah threatened by a dark form somehow sneaking into her bedroom and either psychically or actually physically causing her jump from the window, why couldn't she have been threatened by electronic means (i.e. having the electrical system in her cut off while driving on the freeway.) Or causing an accident by spooking her. In the form of the very much alive workman who was abducting the women, they had a way to explain all the non-electrical damage that occurred (such as the vandalism of Jonathan's equipment) including a reasonable motive (the villain had allowed his obsession with the subject matter to carry him over into evil) without resorting to supernatural creatures. As it was, I didn't find the ending one bit believable, and when a movie fails to make me feel as though a threat could be real, it also ceases to be frightening.
(SPOILER ALERT -- SPOILER -- SPOILER -- SPOILER -- SPOILER -- SPOILER) In the part of the movie that works, the concept is established that people who have died can communicate with the living through electronic means, ranging from simple things and ambiguous such as turning electronic devices on or off to actual aural messages and visuals. The film nicely develops Jonathan (Michael Keaton's) passage from disbeliever to someone who has had his grief assuaged by learning his loved one still exists, then takes the further turn to show how someone could become obsessed with these communications, even to the point of ignoring the emotional needs of his child. It also raises the concept that the person receiving the messages may be so eager to hear them that they do not recognize the possibility the messages are being manipulated by someone with less benign intentions.
(SPOILER -- SPOILER -- SPOILER -- SPOILER -- SPOILER -- SPOILER) Eventually the movie veers away from the central concept (dead people communicating with loved ones) to include live people near death sending help messages about real-time occurrences, then further to include messages about future occurrences, which may or may not be avoidable. While some of this was definitely chilling, the film lost me when it broke the central rule (dead people can only communicate through electronic means) to allow the forces of evil to take on corporal forms.
(SPOILER -- SPOILER -- SPOILER -- SPOILER -- SPOILER - SPOILER) What is particularly irksome is that the film could have stayed within its rules and still put its main characters in physical jeopardy. For example, instead of having Sarah threatened by a dark form somehow sneaking into her bedroom and either psychically or actually physically causing her jump from the window, why couldn't she have been threatened by electronic means (i.e. having the electrical system in her cut off while driving on the freeway.) Or causing an accident by spooking her. In the form of the very much alive workman who was abducting the women, they had a way to explain all the non-electrical damage that occurred (such as the vandalism of Jonathan's equipment) including a reasonable motive (the villain had allowed his obsession with the subject matter to carry him over into evil) without resorting to supernatural creatures. As it was, I didn't find the ending one bit believable, and when a movie fails to make me feel as though a threat could be real, it also ceases to be frightening.