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Yearning for her long-lost youtube ghost-hunting sister, a woman picks up the trail again when fresh video evidence is delivered to her doorstep by a disturbed man.

The first thing to note is the deliberate switching of frames that goes on in the first half of the movie. The opening is dominated by a fast-edit documentary on the backstory, delivered in a square aspect ratio - but even in that the director is careful to use window frames to suggest a deeper level of mystery somewhere out there. Then the screen broadens for the straight 3rd person narrative as we get to know the protagonist. Then it narrows again with the introduction of the fresh video evidence, but viewed on a TV screen - so a frame within a frame. And, as usual in occult movies, we get the 'research' phase, which brings in computer screens and microfiche readers - yet more frames.

The purpose of all this? I guess it allows the director to control the distance of the audience, sort of like zooming in and out. Certainly I felt more comfortable with the wide screen, like I was actually getting the full picture, whereas the narrow screen made me feel that secrets were being held back.

I'm not sure the frame-switching mattered all that much, given that the story is kinda old fashioned, harking back to a couple of demonic classics from 50+ years ago. No names for fear of spoilers, but there is an interesting point here, given that Mike Flanagan is the chief producer.

In this movie the protagonist is twice asked to explain why she never had a child, an issue that was also at the dark heart of Flanagan's Gerald's Game. In that movie the answer is given in a beautiful bit of story-telling, as a look between mother and daughter fades to black. Here, we aren't given a true answer, and the psychological pieces are just left lying around. The closest we get is the protagonist as a child looking toward a window.

The performances are good, pace is good, and there is one simple jump scare at about the third mark that got my adrenalin buzzing. The sound design excels with the spooky hooting and wailing from the woods. And the music score is nicely varied, although the director went for a welcome bit of silence during one creepy scene in a prison. One outstanding use of music is the song strummed by the lost sister, which in hindsight helps elaborate on the mystery - you can catch it again over the end credits, with a sad little nursery rhyme tagged on. Also, the credits show how much effort was put into real effects.

Finally, good to see recognition of the crowd funding of the movie.

Overall: Well told story, but nothing new.

After inviting a lost old woman in from the cold, a ne'er-do-well young woman finds herself the unwilling recipient of a box that demands sacrifices ...

What I call a fatal horror: where the character is bound in to a struggle against fate and must find the key to avoid her own doom. The basic shape is that the trouble begins with an act of selflessness, and only ends with one of selfishness. So the concept is clear, and yet the outcome is muddled - for me, at least.

The first thing to say is that the opening half of the movie is an excellent portrait of a psychotic episode. The young woman's backstory all points to incipient mental illness, including her childhood fear of monsters under the bed and in the closet, and in time these monsters do manifest in a nightmare of her own making, all mixed up with her self-loathing and her inability to assert herself in the world. The performance is spot on, and I felt total sympathy for this flawed character.

Where it goes wrong is in the conversion of this inner struggle to an objective state, in which the outside world is vulnerable to the madness. Is the little niece really in danger of her life, or is the danger just an illusion of the psychosis - or is the psychosis itself the danger? Intriguing, but dramatically confusing. At one point the character warns her sister on the phone not to let her in, even as the sister says, 'Oh, you're already outside'; then the character does arrive to find everyone in the house in a death trance. Say what? It felt that once the struggle was taken outside the character's immediate environment it lost focus.

I do have a problem with fatal horror, because it feels a bit dry, like the story is really working out a theological proposition rather than mucking about in people's real lives. In this case we do get the mucking about, but the second half of the movie sort of loses itself in its own solution. Maybe it makes perverse sense in a theory of divine grace, where salvation lies in doing the opposite of what feels right - but that drives me out of sympathy with the character, and is ... well, nasty and unenlightening. My thinking on this isn't clear, so sorry for rambling, but maybe that's a reflection of the viewing experience.

To round up: The production values are good. There is one simple and effective jump scare early on, in a reaction to pounding at the front door, but otherwise the frights are mild to middling. The musical score is 'dizzy macabre' (if that's a thing), but is always on, leaving little room for silence. Toward the end the pace gets a bit choppy. And the performances are all good.

When he hears of the mysterious death of the wife of his opponent in a debate on the supernatural, Holmes is on the case.

Silly murder mystery that head-fakes its spookiness by emphasising the supernatural at the outset with no intention of the pursuing the theme. But it does have the saving grace of Rathbone in the lead role, supported by the always-interrupted Bruce, and there are some points of interest.

The opening scene is strangely spooky, as we enter a cafe where the people seem frozen in fear as the church bell tolls - with particular emphasis on the girl tending to a bird cage. It gave me a similar vibe to the dancing scene in City of the Dead (1960), where it feels like we're intruding on some malevolent intimacy. Later, in the same cafe, as Watson is called in to examine the body of the murdered girl, the camera pans away from a full frontal female nude in the foreground, a figurine on the bannister; and, after the examination, Holmes emerges and takes note of the bird singing in its cage. These director's choices are kinda exotic in what is otherwise a ham-fisted production. Another Holmes outing for this director, the superior The Pearl of Death, also lingers on a similar figurine during a climactic scene for a female character - perhaps part of his style.

Another point is the leaden delivery of the actor playing the priest in that opening scene, which I'm sure we hear again during the confession speech of the villain, who is played by a different actor - the face is in darkness, so maybe it was voiced over?

Also the special effect of the figure on the marsh is pretty cool, even though it's the silliest element of the plot.

The final point of interest is pure fist-of-ham, as the departing Holmes delivers a Churchillian paean to war-time Canada. It is 1944, what ho!