Attempting to move on his life, an ambitious real-estate agent and his girlfriend find their relationship struggles interrupted by the disappearance of his grandmother, but once he goes missing as well she finds a potential cause to be the legend of a local ghost coming after them.
This ends up being quite a decent if flawed effort. One of the brightest aspects here is the rather intriguing storyline that utilizes a wholly effective rationale for the ghost haunting. Tackling a popular and chilling local legend that's built into the local folklore and tells a rather interesting concept for a ghost film. A mischievous being that preys on guilt and regret, especially with children and the elderly, there's potentially a lot to really get into with the concept of a ghost following a person around to torment them for their feelings of guilt in their lives. This is particularly evident in the fact that the central relationships present in the film that borders on their regrets in life, from failing to keep childhood promises to their lack of understanding the romantic feelings that pop up in their romantic side. Once this early setup is accomplished, the later series of jump scares and ghostly interactions becomes all the more intriguing. Directly aping the original legend with the video footage of the girl in the red dress following a group of unknowing hikers in the mountains, these scenes come off nicely mixing together some rather traditional elements with the folklore trappings. These early scenes of the ghost influencing their dreams as they both end up getting their own dream-like encounter with the ghost popping up out of nowhere to generate scares or the stand-out hallucination of him supposedly eating bugs and worms instead of a regular meal. These are accomplished in conjunction with the creepy-looking ghost itself that looks quite chilling and really helps to sell some of the scares in the scares, especially evident in the scares of it crawling around on the floor chasing after them. There are later scenes in the jungle searching for everyone that manages to generate some reasonable suspense with the frantic search based on the earlier knowledge of their interactions with the ghost and the creepy setting is put to good use as well with these frantic scenes. Overall, these are what really hold this one up. There are some problems with this one. The main issue here is the overly familiar feeling that runs throughout the film, mostly centered on the overloaded sense of stylistic choices taken from other films. With the film focused on thinking these elements drive the main fearful aspects instead of its generally captivating storyline, there's a somewhat bland feeling that can emerge at times. As well, the other big issue here is the rather weak story that tends to be more confusing than anything. This one offers up a wholly intriguing storyline about a young ghost girl that can foreshadow strange incidents and calamities afterward, yet really doesn't do much with it. In the end, this relies more on an intriguing premise more than actually having anything with this ghost and just causes some confusion as for why include that backstory in the first place. These are what hold it down the most.
Rated Unrated/R: Violence and Language.
