*** This review may contain spoilers ***
*Plot and ending analyzed*
I have to certainly ask myself what the other people saw in this film. To me, this film suffers from a lack of interesting plot, laughable interaction amongst the characters and a mediocre and conventional approach to a ghost story.
To me, there was absolutely nothing interesting or "frightening" about the ghost, and the 'ambiance' was typical fare.
The story concerns a child who is left at an orphanage in the middle of the desert in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, and instead of analyzing his soul, which one would hope would happen, considering this is a foreign movie, we are merely given cliched storylines like "the ghost is here for a reason," or "there's a ghost in this building," and it's really all empty. Nowhere do we get to understand the nature of the inner dimensions of the characters.
There is the typical mean kid bully, the nice teacher and then the sexual young man who is having sex with the older matriarch in one of the most brainless events in the film.
Most of the effects were done with a computer, and that takes away any imagination. The war planes flying above, the explosion in the rectory, and even the ghost itself were "enhanced" with digital imaging, and it further ruins this attempt at life, so we are basically left with a modicum of interest.
What is lacking is something inherently interesting, or movable, so there is a ghost, so what? What does he mean to us?
By the end, we are numbed by the excessive and irrelevant use of violence from one of the characters. It all fails in the end when this becomes just another good versus bad soap opera in the world of film.
The only commendable part was the beginning and the end, where the teacher is contemplating the nature of what a ghost is, other than that, this is blantantly unintelligent.
Grade D-
*Plot and ending analyzed*
I have to certainly ask myself what the other people saw in this film. To me, this film suffers from a lack of interesting plot, laughable interaction amongst the characters and a mediocre and conventional approach to a ghost story.
To me, there was absolutely nothing interesting or "frightening" about the ghost, and the 'ambiance' was typical fare.
The story concerns a child who is left at an orphanage in the middle of the desert in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, and instead of analyzing his soul, which one would hope would happen, considering this is a foreign movie, we are merely given cliched storylines like "the ghost is here for a reason," or "there's a ghost in this building," and it's really all empty. Nowhere do we get to understand the nature of the inner dimensions of the characters.
There is the typical mean kid bully, the nice teacher and then the sexual young man who is having sex with the older matriarch in one of the most brainless events in the film.
Most of the effects were done with a computer, and that takes away any imagination. The war planes flying above, the explosion in the rectory, and even the ghost itself were "enhanced" with digital imaging, and it further ruins this attempt at life, so we are basically left with a modicum of interest.
What is lacking is something inherently interesting, or movable, so there is a ghost, so what? What does he mean to us?
By the end, we are numbed by the excessive and irrelevant use of violence from one of the characters. It all fails in the end when this becomes just another good versus bad soap opera in the world of film.
The only commendable part was the beginning and the end, where the teacher is contemplating the nature of what a ghost is, other than that, this is blantantly unintelligent.
Grade D-