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Director: Scott Derrickson
Year: 2012
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour, 50 minutes
A true crime novelist (Ethan Hawke) named Ellison Oswalt moves to a small town into the house where the grisly murder of a family took place. The move was madly protested by his wife Tracy (Juliet Rylance) and their two young children, who unbeknownst to them, were moving into an old crime scene. The murder of the previous family is the subject of Ellison's next book. While unpacking, he uncovers a stash of Super 8 films, all of which show murders of many separate families. After some digging, Ellison begins to think these murders are somehow connected. Strange things begin happening in his family's new house. Ellison, along with a local deputy (and fan of his work), take it upon themselves to solve the mystery.
This movie tries to create an eerie mood by using Super 8 footage of grisly murders to scare the audience. This creepy mood is repeated over and over and over because Ethan Hawke's character repeatedly watched the murders over and over and over. It was very reminiscent of "The Ring." Other than that, it's pretty predictable. The ending was perfect and necessary to make this movie work at all, but you sort of see it coming. We both found Juliet Rylance's character to be grating and extremely annoying.
A lot of people really enjoy this movie and we thought it was just alright. It was good that it was rated R, but it's not destined to be a classic. We liked the use of Super 8 footage to tell the stories, and overall it was a passable horror film.
My Rating: 6/10
BigJ's Rating: 6/10
IMDB's Rating: 6.7/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 63%
Do we recommend this movie: Sure, why not?
We just watched this one tonight and I pretty much hated it. I freaking HATE visually dark movies and there was waaaay too much time spent in the dark in this. I get it, trying to make it spooky and tense, but really it just gets old and annoying when you're not looking at anything. Too much time spent creeping around the house in search of the mystery noises he heard. Don't know what the son's night terrors had to do with anything....wasn't connected to this because he'd already had them in the past.
ReplyDeleteThe Super 8 footage of the family being hung was creepy and disturbing. The grainy images of the The Face were creepy. But the rest was blah.
Totally agree about the annoying wife! Did NOT like her!
~Deb
YEAH, visually dark movies just seem gimmicky, almost. Exactly as you said, IT GETS OLD!!!
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