Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

The first must-see film of the year.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The film starts out as a great psychological thriller. Cara Harding (Julianne Moore) is a psychologist like her father (Jeffrey DeMunn). She does not believe in multiple personalities. Her dad finds a case in David/Adam (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) that challenges her. She investigates the lives they claim to be, only to discover the impossible.What was unfortunate was that this film moves from a clever thriller to a less than stellar horror film. I enjoyed the mystery aspect of the film. Cara's attempts to prove Dave/Adam as a hoax, blowing up in her face, time and time again was great. Too bad they couldn't wrap it up. Still it is well worth a view.Parental Guide: No F-bombs, sex, or nudity.

Confession; I didn't finish it. That is an extreme rarity, as some bizarre force normally compels me to slog through some of the worst of Hollywood's offerings. But when it became apparent, about 2/3rds through, that some mysterious cloud of dark smoke was the evil culprit at the bottom of this twisted mix, I lost interest.It begins with promise, with engrossing interplay between the two stars in some psychiatric evaluation scenes that had the potential of good story telling. A creative why-done-it combined with the question of whether the multiple personalities were genuine could have made for worthwhile theater. Alas, it was not to be. Enter the smoke, exit entertainment value.... and me. A waste of 2 capable actors.

The film begins with promise; a great plot, based upon a soul sucking entity that at first appears to be a man with a split personality. It works well, with a battle of intellects between a psychiatrist (played by Jeffrey DeMunn) and his daughter (also a psychiatrist) played by Julianne Moore. The scene with Frances Conroy (as Mrs Bernburg) coming face to face with her deceased son in the body of Jonathan Rhys Meyers is superb. Sadly the film nose dives with one key plot area - that of doctor Dr. Charles Foster (John Peakes) and his illness (presumably transmitted from Rhys-Meyers' multiple personality character, being left untreated...Why would a doctor (with ample opportunity to visit another doctor in the hospital where he worked) not seek an urgent diagnosis for a life threatening and uncomfortable condition? Worse still, the plot device is used a second time with a second doctor! Other let downs include the time line issue with Monty Hughes (Charles Techman) being too young to have been a young boy in 1918 (though in other aspects that part of the story works well) and the "Granny" who is supposedly doing the work of the Lord, being more like a demonist in her methods. As a Christian film it fails, but as a detective/thriller film it works. It could have worked as a Christian film, had the fates of the main characters been different, with the message of good triumphing over evil unambiguous.

This film held a lot of promise. Julianne Moore and Jonathan Rhys Meyers give compelling performances during the first hour. It is the story that goes off the rails. I believe that horror/possession films make an implied contract with the audience that they will understand the premise and reason for the story by the end. Instead, what begins as a great idea of multiple personalities, turns toward Appalachian magic, with no real explanation beyond telling us that around World War I, a preacher told the local folk to turn their faith from the local belief system and science and trust in him to protect them against an outbreak of influenza. He secretly has his children immunized. Flu vaccines were not available until 1938 courtesy of Jonas Salk. The locals murder him and his children, the local witch pulls his soul out of is body.So then we learn that the man with multiple personalities, is really the preacher, and that he is going around first cursing his victims to die from an influenza like cough, and a strange rash on their backs before stealing their souls by sucking them out of their bodies. The multiple personalities are then the stolen souls manifesting in the preacher's body. In no way does the film (edited for Television) explain how the preacher's body is still running around murdering people. Julianne Moore's character's reactions are flat when faced with her father's death, the death of her brother, and finally her daughter. By the end of the movie, we are supposed to be scared by the final scene (reminiscent of The Omen) but instead we are left wondering how did the story evolve into this thread, and feeling cheated and led on a wild goose chase for the last 112 minutes. The first part of the movie is so well done, it makes me want to find the script and then salvage the ending. Finally, the movie was originally released in the UK under the name "The Sheltering", but though the term is used in the second half of the movie associated with the soul-stealing, it is never really defined.