Director: Alistair Legrand
Year: 2015
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Ghosts
Plot:
Struggling to keep up with her daily demands, a single mother trying to keep her family together finds a vicious spirit is out haunting their house and keeping them there which forces her to turn to her new boyfriend to help aid her in stopping the tormenting experience.
Review:
This overall is a rather typical and clichéd haunted house story. What really tends to work well here are the intense and genuinely frightening scenes of the ghosts doling out the scares here which happens to be somewhat interesting. The fact that we're let on fairly early into the film that he hauntings have been continuous for awhile, as the initial scene of it appearing behind her in the living room coincides with the revelation of not wanting another encounter to occur again before ripping its face off for the terrified viewer, the scenes of it appearing to be a sort of imaginary friend to the daughter offer up some rather tender moments and the rather obvious scenes of the figure coming out of the walls or floors of the house give this a decidedly creepy feeling. Even the later scenes, showing the creature manifesting itself in the home in front of her and the boyfriend gives this some nice action with the way in which they get chased through the house in quite fun manners while the defense barricades used are the probable cause into letting the twist of the film come about which is admittedly quite nice. While the film does have a nice final confrontation in the house where they get to fight it one last time on their own terms, there's not much else to this one that really works as the film as a whole is quite flawed.
The biggest issue here is the fact that the film goes for drama rather than horror, so the majority of the film is determined to go for the other exploits of the chosen drama rather than scares. Since she has all these outside issues to deal with, from the house being in foreclosure to the fact that she obviously recently lost her husband and is dealing with her kids' own behavior that it just feels like too many storylines that don't really belong in a horror film since these drag this to a halt after exceptionally chilling sequences in order to deal with these slow-paced sequences. That also has the other big detrimental factor of giving this one a really jarring tone which really disrupts the supernatural antics since that turns the scenes into rather useless moments because they don't offer any kind of impact if the film moves on from them quite readily. The twist is also problematic, offering up a rather needless change away from what had worked for it leading into the moment and it leaves this one feeling pointless after a while.
Beyond that, the cast is also to blame for the film. Ali Larter as Madison Arjun Gupta as her boyfriend Nikolai Her children, Max Rose as Jacob and Chloe Perrin as Haley These here really lower this one considerably.
Overview: ** 1/2/5
On the whole, this one ended up being merely a solid if unspectacular effort that really doesn't offer much beyond a few somewhat decent attempts at the usual ghostly antics. Give this a shot if you're a true completist for these kinds of genre titles or don't mind the flaws at all, while those unwilling to look past those issues should be given extreme caution about this one.
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