The movie is simple: A mother and her two daughters have been living in a house for 16 years. Both daughters hated the -- apparently -- "ueber-religious" mother. After the mother's death, the daughters set about taking care of the house, except that: one daughter disappears; and the sister who comes after seems to be experiencing spooky, ghostlike encounters. It turns out: The mother had been harboring her serial killer brother, Somebody Barlow (A. K. A. the "Judas Killer"), within a secret bedroom of the house. The ghost of one of Barlow's victims starts making contact with one of the daughters to reveal his hiding place and bring him to . . . justice?
Overall, the movie just doesn't make any sense, although I enjoyed watching it.
Good points:
* Well-acted and well-filmed * Some good "shock" moments. (yes, the moments are a little overdone by now in the genre, but the effect was good, i. e. it made even ME jump a little: a long-time, grizzled Horror Movie buff! * Not too overwrought about being what it is
Bad points (unfortunately several and serious): * The main character, Nicole, had a real bitchy side that wore on me sometimes * During the denouement, the main character gets the usual case of the "stupids" as, instead of using each and every opportunity to escape from the killer, she instead wastes time trying to get a gun off a murdered cop's corpse and, then, makes every effort to alert the killer to her presence by trying to load said dead cop's gun -- wrongly: dropping the cartridge, of course ;-) -- and, then, slowly click-click-click loads the cartridge while the killer looks for her in the room. Dumb, stupid, imbecilic . . . * A cop (viz., Caspar Van Dien) brings a digital camera to the house to see if he can see anything spooky or "ghosty" in the camera's screen. He puts it down somewhere. Then, you see the killer walk across the camera's screen, except . . . the killer's form is NOWHERE in the background. So, are we talking about a ghost killer? No, we can't be, since the woman Nicole SHOOTS HIM square in the head later on! So, um, like, Director . . . what the heck's up with that? * Then, there's the whole problem of how this woman Nicole and her sister (who disappears early on in the film) have lived for 16 years in this small house without noticing that, . . . hmm, . . . there seems to be a whole lot of "extra house" on the house. That "extra house" is the 3rd bedroom wherein Barlow has been living secretly: with the bedroom door dry-walled over and only a small cut-out in a connecting closet for him to crawl out of whenever he wants to . . . y'know. Apparently, these two dumbo girls sleeping right next to this hidden room never heard anything, like (perhaps) Barlow dragging in the corpses of his victims or coming out to get something to eat in the kitchen or just the usual snoring. * For some reason, Barlow no longer actually uses the bedroom, rather preferring to live in the crawl space UNDER the room. Whuh? Does this make any sense to anybody . . . other, than to explain why nobody's in the room when discovered by Nicole and Officer Creek A. K. A. Van Dien? I guess, it had to look like nobody had been living there -- but, they still needed Barlow actually living in the room for the storyline to make sense. * Nicole does this whole "seance thing" in Barlow's bedroom to contact Jennifier Glick, one of his victims who is the ghost which has been spooking her. "What do you want me to know?" Nicole asks over and over. She also screams when the ghost actually responds to her questioning (stupid in and of itself -- she got what she was expecting, for pete's sake!). All of this talking and screaming is done just above the crawl space in which our dear Killer has secreted himself. He doesn't hear any of this? No -- he just crawls out of the (aptly named) crawl space to, y'know, get some rotten food from the fridge . . . cry in his dead sister's room . . . etc. . . . as if he couldn't just hear the commotion RIGHT FRIGGIN ABOVE HIM IN THE ROOM! * Oh, yeah . . . the song for the closing credits was completely inappropriate for this type of movie.
Overall, the movie just doesn't make any sense, although I enjoyed watching it.
Good points:
* Well-acted and well-filmed * Some good "shock" moments. (yes, the moments are a little overdone by now in the genre, but the effect was good, i. e. it made even ME jump a little: a long-time, grizzled Horror Movie buff! * Not too overwrought about being what it is
Bad points (unfortunately several and serious): * The main character, Nicole, had a real bitchy side that wore on me sometimes * During the denouement, the main character gets the usual case of the "stupids" as, instead of using each and every opportunity to escape from the killer, she instead wastes time trying to get a gun off a murdered cop's corpse and, then, makes every effort to alert the killer to her presence by trying to load said dead cop's gun -- wrongly: dropping the cartridge, of course ;-) -- and, then, slowly click-click-click loads the cartridge while the killer looks for her in the room. Dumb, stupid, imbecilic . . . * A cop (viz., Caspar Van Dien) brings a digital camera to the house to see if he can see anything spooky or "ghosty" in the camera's screen. He puts it down somewhere. Then, you see the killer walk across the camera's screen, except . . . the killer's form is NOWHERE in the background. So, are we talking about a ghost killer? No, we can't be, since the woman Nicole SHOOTS HIM square in the head later on! So, um, like, Director . . . what the heck's up with that? * Then, there's the whole problem of how this woman Nicole and her sister (who disappears early on in the film) have lived for 16 years in this small house without noticing that, . . . hmm, . . . there seems to be a whole lot of "extra house" on the house. That "extra house" is the 3rd bedroom wherein Barlow has been living secretly: with the bedroom door dry-walled over and only a small cut-out in a connecting closet for him to crawl out of whenever he wants to . . . y'know. Apparently, these two dumbo girls sleeping right next to this hidden room never heard anything, like (perhaps) Barlow dragging in the corpses of his victims or coming out to get something to eat in the kitchen or just the usual snoring. * For some reason, Barlow no longer actually uses the bedroom, rather preferring to live in the crawl space UNDER the room. Whuh? Does this make any sense to anybody . . . other, than to explain why nobody's in the room when discovered by Nicole and Officer Creek A. K. A. Van Dien? I guess, it had to look like nobody had been living there -- but, they still needed Barlow actually living in the room for the storyline to make sense. * Nicole does this whole "seance thing" in Barlow's bedroom to contact Jennifier Glick, one of his victims who is the ghost which has been spooking her. "What do you want me to know?" Nicole asks over and over. She also screams when the ghost actually responds to her questioning (stupid in and of itself -- she got what she was expecting, for pete's sake!). All of this talking and screaming is done just above the crawl space in which our dear Killer has secreted himself. He doesn't hear any of this? No -- he just crawls out of the (aptly named) crawl space to, y'know, get some rotten food from the fridge . . . cry in his dead sister's room . . . etc. . . . as if he couldn't just hear the commotion RIGHT FRIGGIN ABOVE HIM IN THE ROOM! * Oh, yeah . . . the song for the closing credits was completely inappropriate for this type of movie.
