Hunting Souls

I watched this on a streaming platform nearly a week ago. Very eerie as horror movies should be. The acting was good enough by aal but the lady from social services. But it seemed to be pre-edit copy, meant to be viewed by the producers for editing suggestions. The couple, although played very well by these well-seasoned actors, seemed to had multi-personalities. And, like so many horror, sci-fi & thriller movies, the couple doesn't communicate, but these people took that to extreme, not sharing with each other even after witnessing the spookiest experiences & sightings, things that real people would evacuate the premises, at least for the night for. I feel sorry for the little girls who play Sophie, this being the debut for one of them, who performed their scenes as their role demanded. I sincerely hope the copy I saw was a rough draft, & the final story was evened out.

This film follows the standard plot pattern of a possesssed house or person with the target family initially disbelievers. The movie has a subplot with another family having just experienced the same "symptoms." But about all we can glean is that the child died and the father has a heart attack (could it related to the other mysterious going's-on?) The police and social workers add a new thread, but like the first family, there's no further development. Like the genre's standard plot, a family friend suggests they talk to an uncredentialed dream interpretation therapist. When the family hears what she has to say, which w compasses much more than dreams, the bumpy and fast moving conclusion begins. And about 10 minutes later we're looking at credits.

Do you know those English language video lessons sketches? That people dub Oblivion music over? That's the level of acting in this movie. The main actor especially, speaks like a text-to-speech program and shows the same range of emotion.

The script and dialogue seems alright at first, but the cast has no chemistry at all. Then things take a nosedive - dialogue goes from weird to just disjointed in relation to what is happening - for example one hour into the movie they still deny anything supernatural.

The scares are the tired old loud noises and doors banging stuff. All the sets and props - house, office, hospital, outside shots - they looks so sterile, as if you are watching a commercial and not a real living and breathing world captured on camera.

The demon is just a copy-paste Creature of the Black Lagoon or Stranger Things season 4 type of deal. Of course done way,way cheaper and goofy looking. A demon from "Wish" as the kids say.

Overall a bad movie with no redeeming qualities. Can't kill time with it, can't enjoy it in a so-bad-it's-good kind of way either. Stay away no matter how desperate you think you are for a supernatural horror flick.

Okay story but the acting and the dialogue was cringe and weird multiple times. There's some weird interactions happening, like when they enter the hospital the dad is yelling for a doctor (which makes sense seeing as his child is unresponsive) and the nurse is offended by that; "you don't need to yell... we always take care of her." Then later the doctor and nurse are discussing a previous similar case to that of the child, and the nurse says "well they were best friends." How does she know?? They're 7 year olds, how would she know who their best friends are? Also, of course the first and only person to die in this movie was the one POC in it...

Lastly, the true horror in this movie is corporate America: Mike's boss not caring that he is taking many days off because his daughter is sick and making him choose between his job and his family.

Nothing happens! Nothing! No monster payoff, nothing scary, just nothing! Horrible writing! How does this even qualify as horror? It should be called a drama at best.