A well-made throwback to the spooky ghost movies like The Haunting and Changeling. Scary, suspenseful and a brilliant twist ending. Significantly worse movies have been hits. IMO, this movie is scarier than even Conjuring which was still a good horror film.
Plus, this came on the heels of Saw which was a huge success. Weird that this didn't do that well.
maybe people didn't it had enough gore
shareI actually enjoyed the movie. It reminded me of old-school horror/ghost stories from the late eighties and early nineties.
Yes there are some flaws in this movie, but if you just watch it and don't analyze it too much, it's not too bad.
Yeah agreed. I was shocked to see it actually did bomb since I've always liked it a lot. I thought it deff had an old school feel to it and is pretty under-rated.
You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.
Because its a bad movie all around id say . The acting, the writing, the pacing, really everything is done in a rote and by the numbers manner. It was obviously just a quick paycheck for everyone involved. Even the gore is ho-hum and boring...
shareAgreed, TheBeardedWonder. I saw nothing brilliant here, but rather something that was trying way too hard to be scary and stumbling over its own big feet all along the way. I suppose people who are easily scared by toys may think it was scary, but I sat there wanting to roll my eyes repeatedly. Oh well. I stayed quite with my criticism because I didn't want to ruin it for the others who were watching!
But really, why the hell was the whole damned film shot with a blue filter over it? Draining the color from a movie does not enhance it in any way. It just makes it hard to look at.
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Whose idea was it for the word LISP to have an S in it?
I disagree. No it's not a classic and it has flaws but, all in all, I thought it was a good horror film. The dolls scared me silly and I found it great to see a modern horror film which doesn't fall back on graphic gore to scare or disgust its audience. This harkens back to the old horror films of the 1940s which managed to spook you out without any blood or violence. If you need blood and gore to enjoy a horror film this is obviously not for you.
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True, the movie does have some predictable horror movie tropes, and the story's nothing new to horror fans, but the difference here is that those tropes are made to seem fresh, and they actually work in this film's case---plus there are some genuinely scary scenes in it, Plus I can't remember the last time I saw a good horror film about a ventriloquist. It does have a good old-school feel to it (since it's basically an old-school throwback horror,anyway) like you said, which is what I liked about it (despite the gore.) Plus it's well-acted and put together, and it's actually scary, which you really can't say about a lot of other horror films made these days. Like the title,too. (It's also on Netflix for anyone who hasn't seen it yet.) I don't recall ever seeing a trailer for this film,either (but then I didn't have a TV for part of the year it came out.)
shareI remember a movie called Magic from decades ago about a puppet. Freaked me out... but I was kid back then too... might want to track it down and see how it holds up.
3rd generation American from a long line of Gottscheers... it was Drandul, dude!
lack of promotions....but i found it to be the best movie of James Wan till date
sharePoor promotion, plus negative reviews. I didn't like the film at first, but I watched it for the second time recently, I enjoyed it more.
"None of us are conceited enough to play hero."
- Worth, "The Cube
Because it was bad. And I say this as a big fan of horror films.
share-Crappy promotion, Universal didn't have much faith in the product the studio heads interferred with so much. (shot themselves in the foot?)
-Also "From the Writers, Producers and Director of Saw" catch line on the poster is misleading in a way...MAINLY because this movie is SUCH a different tone then Saw. I'm sure fans of Saw bad mouthed this flick since this was more in tone with Wan's later films Insidious & Conjuring then Saw.
-Lastly, I'm thinking the mid March theatrical release date didn't do it any favors.
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Im gonna punch you in the cooter, I swear to God!
The twist was a JUMP though. As if Mary didn't already have way too much power as a ghost, now she's somehow passing herself as a young living woman too? Was Ella even a real person and possessed, or just made up?
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