Caught this at the cinema tonight.

Overall, I was very impressed with it.

It had a strong atmosphere...even a sinister one at times and there were some inventive scares to go along with the strong imagery and the standard horror cliches.

The film for me was undermined by a slightly weak ending, one that seemed out of tone to the rest of the film and was almost comedic...although nowhere near to the degree of the first Paranormal Activity which had me howling with laughter.

The last three horror films I've seen have followed a similar structure (Silent House [original], The House of the Devil and this one). A long, suspenseful build up (unsuccessful in the earlier two for me, but successful here) to a sudden rush through the climax and resolution.

For me it leaves a sense of dissastisfaction and leaves the film feeling somewhat anti-climatic.

I don't know if it's just coincidence that the last films I've seen have been like this, or it's a new, overused convention of the horror genre.

I thought the other two films I mentioned were very poor, but this one had some geuine scares.

Reading reviews on IMDB, it makes me wonder whether it would ever be possible to write and make a horror film that was almost universally liked by audiences and critics...I suspect it's almost impossible.

Critics only seem to respond to horror films that are really dramas with violent content and numerous commentators complain about horror cliches in terms of production. It seems people want filmmakers to invent a whole new film grammar to use in new horror films, and that just isn't going to happen.

It's something interesting to think about, and I can see the problem...certain techniques are so ingrained that you can recognise what's coming...for instance the old: Main character walks towards the camera so his face fills the screen, which signposts straight away that as soon as he turns there will be someone stood behind him.

Audiences are looking for something beyond the standard techniques but unless a Hitchcock and Goddard rolled into one turns up with some deeply scary scripts, people are going to have to learn to enjoy what horror is and not what they seem to want it to be.

I have mixed feelings about it.
On one hand, I liked it. It was entertaining. Had some pretty decent deaths (of the families). And I thought Ethan Hawke did pretty well.

But, on the other hand...
It was very slow and never really went anywhere. We don't get to see much outside of the house. No change of scenery. It was pretty much all investigation.
And Bagul barely played a part in the movie until the 3rd Act.

Overall, I would give it a thumbs up.
I definitely feel that they could've done better. Raised the bar a bit.
But, compared to the majority of what comes out nowadays, it was a win.

I caught this this afternoon.  It had positive word of mouth and was actually rated R, meaning - I hoped at least - that it wouldn't be some watered down piece of shite.

It definitely isn't a bad little film, but ti sure did leave me feeling underwhelmed.

As I watched, I found that I had alot of time to think about things, because of how slow and "small" it was.  It came off very professionally done, so I was impressed when I got home and saw it was made for only $3 Million - surprising, for sure.

The opening image is great and really sets the tone of the film right off the bat.  Very creepy, and also quite violent in a "for reals" sort of way...as in, not over the top goofy.

Very slow build, but it was effective and creepy.  I'm not a fan of "jump scares" but this one delivered some good ones, and actually, not too many either.

AS I watched, my mind did often wander because so little was going on and in many cases, the same thing literally was playing numerous times.  But, hey...OK, you still got me.

Well, even though I thought I liked where we were going, I was a little worried how we were going to get there.

We never got there.  Not even close, because the problem is one that i bring up all the frickin' time - the story and plot was cursed from the very beginning because the writer never came up with a full story that made sense.  The premise was flawed and for me, that means disappointment.

I actually kind of liked the end and also thought it was quite ballsy, which I always salute to.  BUT...it didn't really make any sense.  None of the characters were remotely relatable to or even likable, really.  Character development was close to flatline for every character, as far as I'm concerned.  And worst of all, although the theme and tone were R rated, what was displayed on film was not.  No gore really, no sex, no nudity, little to no swearing, no drug use, nothing remotely sexy.  I bet ya the central idea is why it couldn't get a PG13 rating, and it's too bad, because it would have done better this way.

But who cares, I guess, as it's already made over $18 Million against that $3 Million production budget.

It was decent for me but cold have been so much better.  Worth a view at the cinema.

Jeff,

Could you expand on what you thought was flawed about the premise, please?

I'll try to, Rick.

So, this deity Baghhuul has been around for centuries and has a nasty reputation for being an "eater of children", which actually just refers to eating, or taking their souls, thus taking them with him to his astral plane or whatever it may be.

Back on our astral plane, Earth, we have 5 eerie mass murders that have taken place, dating back to the 60's (?), I think.  Each murder involved an entire family and in each, a child went missing, never to walk the Earth again.  It seems like these murders were pretty well spread out, like 1 in the 60's, 1 in the 70's, 1 in the 80's, etc.  We also find out that each murdered family lived in the house of one of the earlier murdered families.

So, here's what's really fucked up IMO.  Are we saying that anytime a family moves into a house where Baghuul did his handy work, the same will happen to them?  No, we're not because we know that many families lived in each house over a 50 year period of time.  So, what triggers the demise of certain families only?  What triggered the very first one?  What's with the box of super 8 films "appearing" in the attic?  Did this box appear for each patriarch of the murdered family, or just our boy Ellison?

Finally, and you may say I'm going overboard a bit here, but having the killer turn out to be 1 of the children in the families, is a little tough to swallow for me.  The hanging murder would be pretty difficult to pull off.  The lawnmower murder would be very difficult to pull off, actually.  And, finally, the drowning in the pool would be very difficult unless the kid was pretty strong.

But, I guess my point is that it's very random and "pointless".  For instance, take any haunted house movie and you know that evil lurks in said house, because something evil took place there.  Or take any evil demon type movie and you know the demon is evil and you know he's here to wreck havoc for the Hell of it.

Baghuul doesn't seem to operate on anything other than pure randomness, which the writer thought up, of a way to tie this all together and make a creepy story.  What's missing?  it's really so simple, actually, but no one decided to take the extra effort to seal the deal.

All we need here is some kind of reason that X amount of time passes between murders, and/or each family has something in common which makes them targets for old Baghuul.  Then it would all make some semblance of sense, but as it is now?  Doesn't work for me.  

I didn't realize most of it when I saw it, but I agree with you, Jeff.

I like mysteries and I like mysteries involving either the supernatural or occult even more.

That's probably why I was enjoying this flick up until it all came tumbling down.

Ellison was doing some detective work and finding out things left and right.  HE even gets a cop and whatever Olyphant was supposed to be involved, and again, I thought, "cool".

But once the family leaves and goes back to their bigass original house, you'll notice that everything changed.  It no longer mattered what the mystery was or what all the missing pieces may or may not be.  Just a quick offscreen kill, and Baghuul walks away into the super 8 film, somehow, with the little murderess.

Again, I did not hate this in any way, but it doesn't hold up for me, when thinking about it, and it was too slow and dull to really warrant any excitement or a repeat view.

Good film. My girlfriend's generally not susceptible to horror scares but she was struggling a little with this one - deny it though she might.

Ethan Hawke's casting was a large part of its success and he added an awful lot of weight that a lesser actor wouldn't have.

The ending was broken down a little too clearly for me - ambiguity would've added more - but generally this was a strong film for the genre.

I really enjoyed Silent House, House at the End of the Street, The Possession and The Pact this year and think Hollywood has had an above average output in the genre. Then again, I'm a big horror fan.

The slow buildup was fine for me because you could clearly feel the direction towards something - it wasn't meandering. Again, I think Hawke was absolutely crucial to the suspense taking form successfully.

If you haven't seen it, I'd definitely recommend.

Spoilers may follow, I don't know. You've been warned.

In the last couple years I've tried to learn screenwriting, and as part of that I've tried to become more familiar with the film world, and I've learned to respect how hard it is to craft a truly good story. So I try to cut movies a lot more slack. I try to appreciate films for what they offer as opposed to what they lack. I really do.

For what was clearly a low budget studio film(it's almost all shot in the house), the producers manage to create a spooky film. I guess.

And actually it's almost entirely driven by the soundtrack.

But I'm struggling to find good things to say. The acting was sufficient, I suppose.

Basically, what we have here is formulaic and driven almost entirely by cheap
tricks.

The idea seems to have started out as this being a found footage script. Well, there is found footage, but other than driving the exposition of the story, the actual use of the FF is very minimal, consisting of very brief samples of home movies. The films were cool in creating an element of creep, no doubt about that.

The rest of the scares border on silly. 98 % of them come from the protagonist walking through a dark house and having a loud noise startle the audience. One of these actually worked, as I was drifting off and thinking about something else when all of a sudden a shot gun type blast woke me up. Strangely, nothing really happened in the film to correspond to this blast. It was like the producers knew this was a particularly boring segment, so they threw in a loud noise.

And of course there was a snake under a box, that always works, doesn't it?

When I say the movie is formulaic, that's not all bad. Well, depends what kind of originality you're looking for. The protagonist is a true crime writer who moves his family into a house where a family was murdered, the crime unsolved, and doesn't tell them. The goal and the stakes are transparently ramped up, as is the character flaw: our hero must produce a successful book, or his wife will leave him with the kids, and he will have to go back to some boring job(even though he's a famous writer with several successful books). His flaw is his obsessive desire to finish the book, neglecting his family.

It is standard 3 act. The first turn is when he finds the tapes contain evidence of more murders, almost calls the police, but then does the selfish thing. The second comes when he finally flees.

It's not really clear as far as I can tell why he needs to move into that house in order to write the book. It's not like he's psychic. He doesn't believe in that stuff, actually.

It seemed to get a little interesting with the introduction of the Babylonian legend, but then soon after that we find our hero wandering his house surrounded by child ghosts only the audience can see. At this point the film seemed like someone's homemade youtube video. I wished I packed a tomato.

As for what happens with the little girl at the end, that was telegraphed from the moment he finds out there are several murdered families where one child is missing. The only question left for us to see answered is whether the daughter succeeds in killing the family or whether there is a somehow a happy ending. Things ended up as I expected from about 20 minutes into the film, though I did not predict the axe manner of death. Darn, how did I miss that? That was the most logical choice!

What the heck was the deal with the videotapes? He destroys them, but they come back. Mr Boogie must keep copies in that ancient Babylonian library in the nether region. And those sly Babylonians even had the courtesy to provide extended cuts, send them to our hero in an envelope! Why couldn't they just email it from hell? They have film projectors in hell but no internet?

Anyway, sorry to be negative. I really didn't want to. I guess this is what the genre horror has to offer. I'm starting to understand why reality TV is so popular.

Kevin, you're funny...so what did you really think about the movie?  

I do agree with most of the things you said, but I didn't find it formulaic, actually.  There was too little going on for it to be formulaic.

About the jump scares and the "soundtrack" - yeah, I'm not much a lover of these cheap scares and I know exactly which one you're referring to, where out of nowhere, for no reason, there's a loud blast.  Actually, though, compared to most cheapass PG13 rated horror remakes or just shitfests, there are even more jump scares than we had here.  And that soundtrack?  God awful. So irritating.

The more I think about the movie, the less I like it.

You just wait until Fade hits the big screen.  It will mark the return of true horror.  

I actually liked the sound track, but I really don't have much experience with modern horror, so it's probably pretty standard. I did like it though.

I really don't want to be that guy that just looks for flaws in movies. I didn't go into with that attitude at all. To be honest, I only stayed in the theater because I'm trying to learn, but it was boring enough that I wanted to leave.

You remember that blast, huh? I actually looked off to the side to make sure a car didn't hit the wall of the theater or something. But no one woke up in the house on the screen! It was like they threw that in after editing.

I can tolerate the jump tricks if there's occasionally something else interesting. Or a riddle to figure out. Which there wasn't much of here. You knew from the intro scenes that the little girl drawing on the wall would come into play. And once they said a kid was missing from each family...well, where else could they be going?

I just didn't think of the Lizzy Borden stuff. But we had death by hanging, slashing, drowning, and burning. Not much left. Oh yeah, the lawnmower!

And you are right about little kids being able to pull that stuff off, but I was willing to let that one slide.

What did you think of the kid ghosts floating behind the guy when only we could see? And playing hide and seek in the hall? Can you think of anything lamer than that? It looked very hackish.

Yes, Fade would be much better. Though no supernatural in Fade, and people like that.

Quoted from leitskev What did you think of the kid ghosts floating behind the guy when only we could see? And playing hide and seek in the hall? Can you think of anything lamer than that? It looked very hackish. Yes, Fade would be much better. Though no supernatural in Fade, and people like that.

I did not like the little ghouls in the hall either.  I think that's where it really went downhill for me.  That's the kind of stuff that should only be shown in short flashes, because when the camera lingers on them, they do look pretty weak.

There is supernatural in Fade, although only at the end.

I started out on board with this one.
Dug that Ethan Hawke's character isn't totally likable.
He is doing this to his family for his career.
But it's not a cartoonish villainy thing, thankfully.

Despite the buckets or arguing, I was still into the mystery, until...
The Booger monster reveal was so lazy.
So, you've got a Baghuul problem, essentially.
Who you gonna call for that?

The upchuck of exposition only served to confuse me further.
And the cop on the phone. What gives, screenwriter?

There's a Bah-ghoulish problem in certain houses sometimes? Huh?
If you're not gonna explain the thing correctly, don't bother at all.

E.D.

I thought this one was good overall, the pacing was slow in that first hour but this helped capture Ethan Hawke's character and his obsession with fulfilling past successes and how he kind of neglects his family in this pursuit.

The scares were good but did become run-of-the-mill after a while - how many times can you watch somebody walk through the dark hallways.

I reckon the super 8 films were creepy and I liked how he kept finding new info on repeated views which added some much needed mystery to these films.

There was also some good misdirection with the little boy and his night-terrors because it was obvious the missing children were going to be the killers from the previous murders. All that was left was which one it be from the current two kids and this kept me guessing until the ghosts started popping up and one was with the little girl.

The reveal of what connected all the families was actually a surprise to me and I was left satisfied at the end, even if I personally would have liked it to have gone in a different direction.

Yeah, a good movie and a lot better than Paranormal Activity 4 which sucked big time.