Wow! Such a good movie.

Don't Believe the Hype

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

This is basically a one man play. It is filled with narration of Rosalind talking to her son from beyond the grave. She was involved in an angel cult. Her husband was the victim of an apparent suicide, after which their nine year old son Leon (Aaron Poole) became an atheist. Rosalind did everything in her power to convince him to have faith, but her games only drove Leon away.After her death, Leon inherits her home, one he has never visited. It contains bad electrical wiring, a locked door, and eerie shadows. Things happen to Leon while he is in the house which he cannot explain.The film was mildly interesting. The constant narration, a major part of the story, grew weary. Leon, our only actor, has no character build up. He apparently is some sort of artifacts dealer who had a falling out with a girlfriend psychologist. But other than being an atheist, or "sinner of the mind" we know little about him. He takes medication, as did his mother, but we don't know if that is a factor in what he sees, or what she saw.I kept waiting for the over the top ending to bring this thing home, but don't expect one. Okay rental to watch in the dark during a storm with the tweens.Parental Guide: No f-bombs, sex, or nudity.

Horror film fans who are expecting gratuitous violence, blood and guts are not going to enjoy this film. It's more melancholic and nostalgic than scary, it's quite a long and quiet film, it has no on-screen murder or death and it features religion in a bad light. Now, if you're an unabashed pretentious hipster with an affinity for art, Canadian filmmaking and Gothic revival scenery like I am, you'll absolutely go crazy about this one.Aaron Poole plays a grieving son who never really felt much admiration for his mother (played with chilling elegance by Vanessa Redgrave), as she traumatized him throughout his childhood unintentionally with a strict religious upbringing. Much of the film is taken up by the exploration of the Leigh Estate, and the work that went into this is absolutely to die for, from the beautiful rainbow stained glass to the vintage Catholic memorabilia. The director is meticulous in his work and leaves no corner or shadow without something eerie residing there. The Leigh Estate itself is stunning (is it a real house? I want to see it in person!), but it's not at the heart of this film. It becomes revealed that Rosalind's devout religion drove her further from her son rather than bonding them closer. Out of loneliness and isolation she commits suicide. We get brief glimpses into her past, which could be interpreted in numerous ways; ultimately it seems to be that Rosalind and her late husband became involved in a peculiar cult run by the quite creepy Rahn Brothers (both played by Julian Richings, my favourite actor! He was 'Death' on Supernatural and Yuri in Patch Town). The Rahn Brothers appear to have possibly been involved with the husband's death on a bridge although this is never clarified much further. Tension begins to build in subtle ways as it goes along, but it's the psychological sadness in the story that resounds a lot longer than the "horror" does.This film is quite odd and not for everyone; some viewers are going to find it terribly boring and others will appreciate the effort put into it. Either way it's not just a film, but also a puzzle. It's the tiny artistic details that really make it shine. The mirror effect with the Rahn Brothers to create a visual of two people instead of one is very impressive, as is the collection of many angel statues and figurines that were gathered before filming took place. The soundtrack wasn't memorable but it was enjoyable anyway. Personally it all had me thinking back to films like 'Don't Look Now' (1973) and 'Alice Sweet Alice' (1976). Real issues lie beneath the fiction, in this case the suggestion that we should not force our beliefs onto our own children, and that grief is not an illness or something to hide from, but rather a connection to the dearly departed. Maybe I just miss that classic style of horror from before the era of cheap slasher pictures and found-footage, but I fell in love with this story and its presentation completely, and it's definitely something that I would watch again, especially in case I missed any small details. The filmmakers have a habit of hiding tiny things within scenes and creating something elaborately decadent and mysterious.

This movie has a very low rating, one that it does NOT deserve. As this movie is more of a suspense building religious horror film designed for people who are interested in watching an intelligent "Hitchcock style" film that will grind on your nerves and make you look twice in the shadows. I am afraid that many viewers were expecting a slasher style blood and guts jump-scare movie. Not so with this one. Ghosts, demons and dark iconology scare the viewer into a dark place. This is a good film, one that achieves its goal of installing terror and making you think about it afterwards. Bravo to the director on creating something unique in a genre overrun with splatter fest and cheap gore.Watch this one if you have a keen intelligence and want something different.

There is too much exposition from the narrator to start with. Too much repetition. The idea of a dead person talking to someone is a very good one and could have been treated in a much more subtle manner. No need to say "I was lonely" 500 times. It only takes 1 to understand that she died a lonely person. It takes all the momentum from the ending.The camera following was quite interesting. Though at sometimes quite amateurish. Also there's a part where the camera is shooting at the closed door for way longer than it should. And that shot goes nowhere. It needed some reasonable resolution.The whole "ghostly presence" thing only had one good moment: when the little statue appeared behind the man in the basement, but again, no resolution for that shot either (ie, the motif didn't continue).There's a lot of walking around to reach nowhere.The "visiting man" had no resolution at all.As for the "dark creature": If the creature was the embodiment of the woman's loneliness in her later days in life, it makes little sense for the man as a child to be haunted by it. It would have worked quite beautifully if there was a moment in which all the "no resolution" moments came to one brief shot/movement related to the woman, and not to the man. After all, the man is there only to give some weight to the dead woman's narrative.To sum it up, it lacks many things that would make it a great movie. Desperation, Depression, Oppression. Everything related to loneliness and old-age.All these things aside, there are some good things about it. The props seemed somewhat overbearing, but I do know some people who's homes are filled with them to the roof. And, to be honest, some of those props were really good and added to the ambiance.The dark creature is well made (except it's shadow)