First, I would like to say the visual aspects of the film were very pleasing to the eye. Many of the scenes in the crowded house with the antique items everywhere were well shot, had just enough color to draw the eye, and left you searching the picture for more details. That was about the only thing I enjoyed.
The acting wasn't bad either. It was mainly the storyline, or lack therefor, that really got to me.
The film opens with an old woman narrating, she is going on and on about some tangent about her son. None if it really makes a lot of sense, but you get the idea that the son doesn't really like the mother very much, grew up, left, and never came back, and now she has passed away.
The story begins with the son showing up to the house. When weird stuff starts to happen, we are exposed to his disinclination to partake in his mother's weird religious rituals. This is a theme throughout the movie, and is even the "cliffhanger" at the end of the movie, his reaffirming his disinterest in his crazy mother's religion. The rest of the film consists of him creeping around the house and being scared by possible hauntings or possible hallucinations; it is kind of left up in the air for the viewer to decide which one. At the end of the movie, nothing is really revealed or explained, and the son just ends up leaving. The closing scene reveals the mother is haunting the house.
That is really all there is to it... I found myself distracted during long boring scenes where nothing significant seems to happen and the son is just wandering around the house, maybe chasing a skittering noise or a brief shadow, which piques your interest but ends up not being enough to really scare you or satisfy what you thought was going to be a scare scene. There were some cult-ish elements at one point that began to unravel into the story, but for some reason you never get to learn the extent of the cult or the details of it and it is never really explained or explored in the story. Actually, I would say that is the entire reason why I disliked the film. It more or less takes you around and shows you all these neat and interesting elements of a really good horror film, and right as the story is starting to get really good, the main character just stands up and decides he is going to leave and just forget about all these neat interesting horrific elements he has uncovered in the previous hour of stumbling about this old house.
There were exactly 3 scenes that actually made me interested enough to focus on the film, all toward the end and involving ghost-like creatures that appear for a mere seconds. Now, since the reviews on IMDb really aren't that bad, I did decide to watch the movie twice: the first time, I fell asleep about 30 minutes in, when the main character is just beginning to wander about the abandoned house. I decided to give it another try, because really now, it can't be THAT boring, and besides, I am a huge horror movie fan, and even if a horror movie is REEEAAALLLY, REAAALLLLY BAD I still end up enjoying most of them.
This particular one, eh, I still wouldn't say it's bad, but it was boring, there was a lot left to be discovered, explained, revealed. I did not like the writing, and I especially did not like how it ended with the son simply walking away without really learning anything. It just seems like a waste of a film. I know based on the comments, many people were able to see a deeper meaning in the film, such as the woman's struggle with her faith and the symbolic mother/son story involved, to me it was just a very boring, pointless movie with -ZERO- character growth or development. The son arrived, wandered around a bit, and left, basically feeling the same as he did before he arrived, and resolving none of the conflicts he discovered while wandering around, like the cat-creature or the weird angel statue opening it's eyes.
So he basically comes across all this freaky stuff and is like, meh, nah I'm just gonna leave.
Come on now!! What the heck kind of ending is that!! I kinda wish I would have fallen asleep the second time as well!
The acting wasn't bad either. It was mainly the storyline, or lack therefor, that really got to me.
The film opens with an old woman narrating, she is going on and on about some tangent about her son. None if it really makes a lot of sense, but you get the idea that the son doesn't really like the mother very much, grew up, left, and never came back, and now she has passed away.
The story begins with the son showing up to the house. When weird stuff starts to happen, we are exposed to his disinclination to partake in his mother's weird religious rituals. This is a theme throughout the movie, and is even the "cliffhanger" at the end of the movie, his reaffirming his disinterest in his crazy mother's religion. The rest of the film consists of him creeping around the house and being scared by possible hauntings or possible hallucinations; it is kind of left up in the air for the viewer to decide which one. At the end of the movie, nothing is really revealed or explained, and the son just ends up leaving. The closing scene reveals the mother is haunting the house.
That is really all there is to it... I found myself distracted during long boring scenes where nothing significant seems to happen and the son is just wandering around the house, maybe chasing a skittering noise or a brief shadow, which piques your interest but ends up not being enough to really scare you or satisfy what you thought was going to be a scare scene. There were some cult-ish elements at one point that began to unravel into the story, but for some reason you never get to learn the extent of the cult or the details of it and it is never really explained or explored in the story. Actually, I would say that is the entire reason why I disliked the film. It more or less takes you around and shows you all these neat and interesting elements of a really good horror film, and right as the story is starting to get really good, the main character just stands up and decides he is going to leave and just forget about all these neat interesting horrific elements he has uncovered in the previous hour of stumbling about this old house.
There were exactly 3 scenes that actually made me interested enough to focus on the film, all toward the end and involving ghost-like creatures that appear for a mere seconds. Now, since the reviews on IMDb really aren't that bad, I did decide to watch the movie twice: the first time, I fell asleep about 30 minutes in, when the main character is just beginning to wander about the abandoned house. I decided to give it another try, because really now, it can't be THAT boring, and besides, I am a huge horror movie fan, and even if a horror movie is REEEAAALLLY, REAAALLLLY BAD I still end up enjoying most of them.
This particular one, eh, I still wouldn't say it's bad, but it was boring, there was a lot left to be discovered, explained, revealed. I did not like the writing, and I especially did not like how it ended with the son simply walking away without really learning anything. It just seems like a waste of a film. I know based on the comments, many people were able to see a deeper meaning in the film, such as the woman's struggle with her faith and the symbolic mother/son story involved, to me it was just a very boring, pointless movie with -ZERO- character growth or development. The son arrived, wandered around a bit, and left, basically feeling the same as he did before he arrived, and resolving none of the conflicts he discovered while wandering around, like the cat-creature or the weird angel statue opening it's eyes.
So he basically comes across all this freaky stuff and is like, meh, nah I'm just gonna leave.
Come on now!! What the heck kind of ending is that!! I kinda wish I would have fallen asleep the second time as well!