Winifred Meeks

I had high hopes when I read about this film, being a fan of Lara Belmont and the supernatural genre. I settled down last week to watch it hoping to be entertained by a good tale and I was. To a point.

The acting was great and there was a good eerie atmosphere throughout the film.

Unfortunately I felt the film would have worked better as a 45 minute one off TV drama. I'm sorry to say I just felt there was a lot of time where nothing happened. I also sadly didn't like the films ending..

This begins with a kind of Universal films tribute - the opening credits come complete with Hans J. Salter's familiar 1940s music suite, and our heroine Anna James is listening to a Universal Sherlock Holmes soundtrack in the opening scenes (1946's 'Terror by Night', as it goes). Before much else happens, she settles down to watch 'Nosferatu' and Vincent Price in further classic old films. It seems that a deliberate decision has been made that identifying these vintage icons is far more interesting than anything else going on here - because for some considerable time, nothing else *is* going on here.

Anna (Lara Belmont) wanders around the big isolated house she has rented. She sits down, stands up, arranges her laptop on a desk, walks around, and has a cuppa. Sometimes she is in daylight, other times in the dark. It is scintillating stuff. There are nice views of the rolling countryside, often with a blue filter over them. All to the strains of melancholy piano music reassuring us all this meandering is deliberate. This is the film.

I very rarely watch a film and get the feeling I am having the mickey taken out of me, but this is the case much of the time here - how long can I watch someone doing nothing? I like slow-burning, atmospheric stories, and there is a remote ambience here; there are also a handful of genuinely eerie moments, but you really have to wait far too long for them. My score is 4 out of 10.

Honestly it was boring, and slow moving. There was hardly any dialogue, and instead there was a lot of silence filled with radio chatter, or the TV in the background.

I think it tried to build up an atmosphere, but because it didn't really seem to focus on anything else it fell flat. The parts with the ghost weren't even scary, they were just there.

I read reviews about this movie and it sounded interesting, a mix of drama and supernatural, something I used to like about British movies when I was a lot younger. First there was the radio drama, playing loudly during a car ride to where she was staying. Why? I'm guessing to cover up the very loud piano music that did not cese playing after. I got the part of "and a happy new year" which played over and over. Why? I do not care if a movie will eventually end up being great, I care about my sanity having to here someone playing bad Chistmas music that has zero to do with anything. Made it to 12 minutes and 22 seconds. Not the first movie with some ego maniac playing loud piano music, is that an insane new movie genre?

This film is like the Shining. I went completely mad watching this and really wanted to grab and axe and chop the living hell out of it. I couild only last thirty minutes of this and in that time there is literally no horror elements to it at all, even some terrible Horror movies I've seen can pull that off, establish the genre within the first ten minutes, this is so bland, i began to wander off in my mind and wonder what circumstances led to this lead actress agreeing to audition for this and accept to commit to the shooting. I felt sorry for her and I zoned out of the second phone call of her and her father whilst stock footage played.