A sceptic attends a seance, and won't leave the house until she finds the truth.
Some nice ideas in this movie, treating the seance scenario as more than a gimmick in an attempt to dig down into character. The camera work is good, always trying out the interesting angle, and the location is used to the full to shape the story. This is mostly a two-hander, with decent performances as the characters lay out their conflicting beliefs through flashbacks to their pasts. Sometimes the music is interesting, with a mix of piano, strings and synth, although it does get laid on heavy in some talking scenes.
The big drawback is the dialogue, with way too much piled on when we can figure things out for ourselves, and way too much sarcasm even after the opening scene has pitched its sceptical credentials. That scene might have been better if the direction just concentrated on the actors' faces as they reacted to events, instead of having them butt in all the time, which would have made the piano episode really hit home with just a few lines. The Tracey-Hepburn patter between the two main characters is kinda annoying, although they do settle into an interesting antagonism. But even then, the tone gets misjudged, especially in a scene that repeats the lame humour of the phrase "portable poltergeist panic-room," completely deflating the spooky events that preceded it.
The psychology turns out simple in the end, which is disappointing because it seemed to be building on the interesting idea of ghosts as people in wave, rather than particle, form, which could have mapped on to how we deal with each other emotionally. The resolution has the right idea, but goes on too long.
Overall: Plenty to chew on, but the writing watered it down.
Ps. What's with the roccata in the music credits?
