Altar

The Altar is a ghost story in the classic tradition. Meg (Olivia Williams), Alec (Matthew Modine) and their children move in to a decrepit Yorkshire mansion whilst Meg restores it for the owner. Over the next couple of months the haunted nature of the house becomes apparent, with the usual banging sounds, slamming doors and ethereal appearances. Most of the film relies heavily on Olivia Williams and she does an OK job, with Matthew Modine limping in towards the end.

Undoubtedly, the film borrows heavily from other ghost and spirit films, most notably The Shining, but it was almost like playing bingo, identifying tropes from other films as it progressed, such as The Exorcist, Don't Look Now, etc. The TV movie feel and austere feel of the grand old house give a 1970s drama feel to the film. Some may associated this with quality drama, some with cheap production values.

There are some plus points: the old Yorkshire mansion and it's windswept grounds give a good background feeling, and the explicit pictures of the ghosts is usual and scarier than most in the genre - more like The Grudge than Turn of the Screw.

Overall, I was left with the question, why? Did this movie really need to be made?

This is a bad movie. When I knew the cast, I thought it had to be good. Experienced actors with a great curriculum of good movies. Well, it started out very bad and it gets worse till the end. A lot of clichés. The same and old ones that everybody saw in thousand of other horror type movies. Bad acting, which surprised me. It seemed that Mathew was not there at all....he was around the movie scene and stopped a while to make some filming. Didn't feel him at all. The plot, it's old and the same one, ever and ever again. The effects are bad and didn't scare one bit. Not even the slamming doors, or the sounds...nothing is capable of scare in this picture. My question is: why someone bothers to do a movie like thousands of other? and why did the actors accept being part of this? I really don't understand. There are a lot of stupid scenes also. It's really not good enough to spend time watching.

Atmospheric haunted house horror about a designer who moves her husband and kids into a spooky Yorkshire manor she has been hired to restore. Beautifully shot on location, director/screenwriter Nick Willing makes the most of the subdued, wild beauty of the Yorkshire moors. I wish we had a better sense of the gorgeous house the family takes over -- for all the reliance on secret rooms and bricked up passageways, the internal layout of the house remains vague and generic. Also less defined than they should be are the couple's two children, who we don't get to know very well. This makes the peril they are in less compelling than it could be. Olivia Williams does a great job as the emotional center of the film, trying to hold her family together in the face of mounting financial pressures and a menacing presence that seems to grow more powerful. Like many such stories, the supernatural here is an expression of the resentments and strains that have crept into William's marriage to her failed artist husband, played by a miscast Matthew Modine. While it doesn't break any new ground, "Altar" builds and mostly maintains a high creepiness factor, especially when Modine discovers a new medium and new canvas for his art. This is a good, old-fashioned, restrained horror film, well worth checking out.

Nick Willing best known for his epic TV Mini-Series like Nederland and Tin Man, takes us on a different journey out on the mores. Just when you thought the days of atmospheric storytelling had given way to shaky cameras and CGI comes this chilling tale it grabs you draws you in gently with strange often inexplicable behavior from Mathew Moline. Eerie noises fill the quiet architecture and landscape. Olivia Williams delivers a strong performance as the wife and mother and its through her you find yourself saying don't open that door, don't walk in the dark, you will find some genuine scares. Reminiscent of classics like The Haunting, Ghost Story and more recently the Woman in Black. Crappy, atmospheric, chilling, well paced, directed with finesse and style, captivating yet chilling camera angles Mr. Willing has won many Emmy's for his writing and directing here he shows the ability to create engaging mature Gothic horror for adults. I gave it a 7.

No, this is not great filmmaking.

(Must be a lot of cast and crew having rated this on here.)

Just going to ramble about this in no special order.

Some places it seems like they have used, I don't know, Adobe Premiere effects, or worse yet, effects that are in the camera itself.. Thats a little wtf, right?

As far as I can remember, one or two short scenes are almost creepy, actually. But they are way outweighed by what is wrong, and bad, and not creepy.

Olivia Williams is annoying as crap! She has the worst looking hair, and it is even a point in the movie! I got mad just looking at her stupid hair. That's not good.

There is nothing new here, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but what is here, is not done very good, and that's a bad thing.

The plot with the wife and the husband and the story of the house and the this and the that, could have been cool, but it is just not good enough.

One scene with a sculpture and some smashing is kind of cool. Best part of the movie.