Mike Flanagan is one of the best directors of modern cinema, but he slightly missed the mark with this one. It has the bones of a good movie, but it fails to effectively combine everything and put the finishing touch on it.
The characters felt strong, but upon further inspection they could have used with one or two less characters as in the end lots of them feel shallow, like we know nothing about them. Mikey (the boyfriend) for example, dies late in to get the climax moving and I realised, we know nothing about him. Even the children feel slightly shallow and whilst we know lets about them it just felt like they need that little extra something to help define them beyond the clichés associated with their character, to elevate them from characters into people.
The movie itself also feels slightly short, possibly gaining from an extra 15 minutes. The film lacks rising tension and just seems to jump from key points without the necessary details to earn getting there. The girl goes from being possessed, to doing typical creepy kid stuff, to murdering people. There needs to be escalation in between with the child going from creepy child to something worse, then murder not just creepy kid suddenly starts murdering people.
Then there is the climax, the entire thing is overly jump scare reliant, to an unreasonable degree. I'm not the kind of person who will crucify a film for having jump scares, but the climax of this movie is exclusively jump scares and by the end they just feel tired and predictable. This paired with the confusing "stop the voices" thing which is never properly explained just makes you regret watching the film all the way to the end, a really disappointing finish.
It's not a bad film and it has some good things going for it, but it falls significantly short of the standard Mike Flanagan has set for himself and I would not recommend it.
The characters felt strong, but upon further inspection they could have used with one or two less characters as in the end lots of them feel shallow, like we know nothing about them. Mikey (the boyfriend) for example, dies late in to get the climax moving and I realised, we know nothing about him. Even the children feel slightly shallow and whilst we know lets about them it just felt like they need that little extra something to help define them beyond the clichés associated with their character, to elevate them from characters into people.
The movie itself also feels slightly short, possibly gaining from an extra 15 minutes. The film lacks rising tension and just seems to jump from key points without the necessary details to earn getting there. The girl goes from being possessed, to doing typical creepy kid stuff, to murdering people. There needs to be escalation in between with the child going from creepy child to something worse, then murder not just creepy kid suddenly starts murdering people.
Then there is the climax, the entire thing is overly jump scare reliant, to an unreasonable degree. I'm not the kind of person who will crucify a film for having jump scares, but the climax of this movie is exclusively jump scares and by the end they just feel tired and predictable. This paired with the confusing "stop the voices" thing which is never properly explained just makes you regret watching the film all the way to the end, a really disappointing finish.
It's not a bad film and it has some good things going for it, but it falls significantly short of the standard Mike Flanagan has set for himself and I would not recommend it.