Arthur Kipps (Danielle Radcliffe) is a lawyer who has been sent to a small village to settle the estate of a woman whose family died tragically. While in their home, he begins seeing her ghost as well as the deaths of several local children. He realizes the he is the one who must put an end to this.
If Daniel Radcliffe wants to make a name for himself and get past the Harry Potter thing, he needs to pick better projects than this. It’s kind of sad seeing anyone signed up for this movie because it’s such an utter bore. It’s very slow and laughably predictable. It’s just a series of jump scares, one after the other, and every single one of them is spotted a mile away. I hate jump scares, so you can imagine how annoying this was for me to sit through. There’s maybe one or two genuinely creepy moments, but the rest is just filler.
And I’m not kidding when I say filler. There is a good half of this movie that is pretty much just one scene of Daniel Radcliffe walking around this house, very slowly mind you, hearing a noise then seeing a face or a handprint and getting frightened. It goes on far too long, and a lot longer than anybody would have actually dealt with it. Honestly, if I had been in this exact situation I would have stopped being scared halfway through. It’s funny, actually: By the end of the movie Radcliffe’s reactions to spooky things happening is to just shrug it off as an annoyance. It’s almost like he was so conditioned to it at that point that even he realized how bad the movie was.
I don’t really want to blame Radcliffe for his performance in this movie. His character is utterly pointless and exists solely as eyes for the audience. This movie could have easily been in second-person (meaning you the audience would be the main protagonist) and just ran through like the Haunted Mansion ride and had the same exact effect and storyline. I was very nearly going to give this movie a 2/10 but then what they do to Radcliffe’s character at the end really brought it down a point. It’s such a lame, cop out ending. Though actually, to be fair, if it had gone the other way, I would have given the movie a 0 probably.
This movie is pointless and it would be a waste of your time to sit through it. Go watch something more thought-provoking or at least scarier if you are really in the mood for something like that. And Daniel, please for the love of your career pick something better next time. Maybe a romantic comedy? And I’d love to see you play a villain one day. You’re not a bad actor, you just need to find a movie that isn’t so painful to sit through.
