Rating of
2.5/4
It won't give you nightmares, but see it anyway
theCriticalMarisa - wrote on 03/26/11
To be honest, I really found this movie more sad than scary.
A teenage boy, stricken with cancer, and his family rent a home to be closer to the hospital where the boy is receiving his treatments. It soon comes to light that the house was once a funeral parlor where seance's and other not-so-pleasant things once took place. Before long, many strange things start happening in the house, and Matt, the teenage boy, is most affected by this. At first, his parents think the treatment he's undergoing in a clinical trial is to blame for his hallucinations, but it soon becomes apparent that something is very wrong in their hell house.
This movie is pretty much your standard things pop up and scare you type of flick. The story is interesting, but hard to follow at some times because it's somewhat multi-layered. Kyle Gallner, who plays Matt, did a phenomenal job, and I truly bought him as a boy near death, who was fighting with the next world. The rest of the acting was for the most part what you'd expect from a horror movie- average.
From what I've read about the actual family's claims of what happened in the house in real life, this movie cleans it up quite a bit, which was nice and very uncommon for the genre. Google it. If you have a shred of decency, you'll be glad, too.
To sum it up, it's not a classic, but worth seeing.
