The Haunting of Margam Castle

Please don't. You know you have those movies that are so bad, they're good? Well this isn't one of them.

I made the mistake of letting my wife have free reign over the tv remote tonight and this was the result. After 10 minutes she was asking to put Strictly back on. I told her I was going to make her watch this film until it finished. To add insult to injury, she then told me that she'd rented it (through my Sky account).

Just over half way through, my wife said she had to go and check on our daughter. I didn't see her again until after the film had finished.

This movie has the standard haunting story, nothing new here. I am fine with that. Being a big consumer of horror films, I am used to new films using old story lines.

HOWEVER, and that's a big however, the acting in this movie is deplorable. It is painful to watch the lead female actor "acting". For most of the dialogue she appears to be reading off a script, rather than acting. It all seems very forced. It is just impossible to immerse yourself in the story when the characters are so unbelievable. As the title of this review says, this is the perfect movie not to watch - I suggest doing laundry instead, as that is bound to be a better experience than watching this movie.

Good grief this is awful. Seriously dull monotone stilted dialogue, cringeworthy outdated cliches about the British (cue lots of comments about how we're all apparently obsessed with the weather, have terrible teeth and go misty eyed at the thought of going to America). Slow action, an entire scene focussed on a character putting her dinner in a microwave. Turned it off after half hour (the film not the microwave). Seriously don't waste your time. The first moment where it was meant to be scary we burst out laughing. We were rooting for the ghosts.

Oh Lord this is a waste of time. Absolutely NOTHING original in this film. The acting was bad, no emotion, like they were reading from a teleprompter. I'm not sure what the first minute of the movie was about, I guess a kid scared by "Disney's Halloween Treat" would have been scared by it, but it was like a psychotic dream of someone's. The ending? Who even cared? Nothing original there either. Go watch a wall of paint dry instead of watching this movie. The reason I gave it two stars was, the castle itself was nice.

I must admit that I had hoped for just a tad more from this 2020 movie titled "The Haunting of Margam Castle" than what writer and director Andrew Jones managed to deliver.

Initially I was intrigued by the movie's cover/poster, and it did seem to be a movie that could be interesting. And with it being a horror movie dealing with a haunting, of course I was interested and had to watch the movie.

However, "The Haunting of Margam Castle" turned out to be a very slow paced and even less interesting movie. Nothing much of any worth or interest happened throughout the prolonged movie, running at such a slow pace that it almost felt like torture sitting through the ordeal.

The storyline was just downright pointless and uneventful, to be bluntly honest. And that was what sank the movie well below mediocrity, because its production level was actually adequate.

For a horror movie, the most scary part about "The Haunting of Margam Castle" was how devoid of anything even remotely scary that director managed to present to the audience. And the haunts that were in the movie didn't even feel like ghosts or apparitions in any way. So it was a very stale movie in terms of frights and scares.

The acting in "The Haunting of Margam Castle" was bland, taking into consideration that the actors and actresses literally had nothing to work with. I wasn't familiar with a single performer in this movie.

All in all, "The Haunting of Margam Castle" is not worth the effort. If you enjoy a good horror movie that gives you the chills or makes the hair at the back of your neck stand up, you should definitely watch something else, because "The Haunting of Margam Castle" is not going to do the trick.

The cover/poster brandish "the most haunted building in the United Kingdom. Well, if that was the level of haunting and ghost activity, then the UK is a pretty dead zone.

I am rating this 2020 movie a generous three out of ten stars, based mostly on its production level.