Spoiler Alert. Watch first and enjoy if you don't want another's p;reception of the film.
The movie. Well, it has moments but is a little, no, quite a bit disjointed. The character flipping sometimes works but mostly doesn't. Why the same character (Carol I think.) keeps coming back as a ghost guide to Lisa in a way is confusing. The statement that Lisa must stay away from the living uttered by a spooky voice only confuses and does not explain anything pertinent to the movie. Is she dead? If so, who bother with anything awake or not? If dead and unaware as are her parents, no harm done. Only when one "wakes up" do bad things start happening. This is a major flaw.
The twist plot is set up in a ham-handed kind of way so that the surprise that worked well in a movie like "The Sixth Sense" misses here.
The time shifts and resets occur too often to really follow the suspense. Too many fathers or not enough. Why only one family to interact with when so many children were supposedly taken?
There are some creepy moments which are more or less typical horror movie fare. Amazing how "It was a dark and stormy night" scenarios still are the basis of thrillers and suspense movies. After all, there's nothing more frightening than a young girl crawling into a confined, dark place in search of some kind of evil of which she barely understands. But a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. So alone she braves the unknown. Cliché?
So, is she dead and awake or is she not dead and asleep or dreaming while dead or in a limbo that resembles Hell more than an afterlife. And the family is supposedly put there by an evil force that possesses the fathers? Then where are all the others who were victims of the same evil? I kept waiting to see them but they never appeared.
When I( see movies like this, I always hope they will achieve the level of "The Lovely Bones." But in comparison, TLB was leagues above this effort.
The movie. Well, it has moments but is a little, no, quite a bit disjointed. The character flipping sometimes works but mostly doesn't. Why the same character (Carol I think.) keeps coming back as a ghost guide to Lisa in a way is confusing. The statement that Lisa must stay away from the living uttered by a spooky voice only confuses and does not explain anything pertinent to the movie. Is she dead? If so, who bother with anything awake or not? If dead and unaware as are her parents, no harm done. Only when one "wakes up" do bad things start happening. This is a major flaw.
The twist plot is set up in a ham-handed kind of way so that the surprise that worked well in a movie like "The Sixth Sense" misses here.
The time shifts and resets occur too often to really follow the suspense. Too many fathers or not enough. Why only one family to interact with when so many children were supposedly taken?
There are some creepy moments which are more or less typical horror movie fare. Amazing how "It was a dark and stormy night" scenarios still are the basis of thrillers and suspense movies. After all, there's nothing more frightening than a young girl crawling into a confined, dark place in search of some kind of evil of which she barely understands. But a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. So alone she braves the unknown. Cliché?
So, is she dead and awake or is she not dead and asleep or dreaming while dead or in a limbo that resembles Hell more than an afterlife. And the family is supposedly put there by an evil force that possesses the fathers? Then where are all the others who were victims of the same evil? I kept waiting to see them but they never appeared.
When I( see movies like this, I always hope they will achieve the level of "The Lovely Bones." But in comparison, TLB was leagues above this effort.