The Small Hand

Dark, melancholy and too long.

Nice cast - it wasn't their fault. But I guessed there would be yet another doomed child at the end. And getting there was a rather tortured journey.

More sad and plodding than scary.

Never heard of either Susan Hill or her story The Small Hand but I have just finished watching this TV adaptation. Not as bad as many other reviews make out. The creepy, delapidated mansion is probably the best thing about it. Good cast, though the main character, played by Dougie Henshall does mumble a lot. The ending had no great surprises but there was adequate scares along the way.

Poor writing, acting and directing. The pace is slow from the outset and doesn't improve from there. No suspense is built and has you struggling to invest yourself in this. A few scenes are laughable and have you wanting to turn off before the halfway marker. You won't care about the characters, you won't care about the story. Channel 5 built plenty of hype, more anticipation than the entire movie could produce. A movie so poor I would never want to read the book

The lack of suspense in this was mind boggling. Douglas Henshall is a good actor but he was wasted here. The ghost itself had zero fear factor. I don't think the director has ever watched an effective ghost story adaptation. The Uninvited (1944), The Haunting (1963), The Changeling (1980), The Woman in Black (1989 and 2012), and The Conjuring (2013) all got it right; don't show too much too soon (in the case of The Haunting, don't show anything at all)! Let the imagination do the work! This... didn't do that. I own the original story, and it is way, way better than this. A huge letdown.

The direction of this adaptation of Susan Hill's "Ghost Story" moves at a glacial pace. It is also heavily riddled with very corporeal apparitions appearing before the protagonist thus negating any real suspense or apprehension you, the viewer, may have had.

A big disappointment. I would only recommend this film as a night-time sedative.