I won't say it's the best movie, but it should have at least 65 % on Rotten Tomatoes and have around 6.5-7 on IMDB. It's beautifully shot, it has great acting, the paranoina gets under your skin. Sure, the ending might be a bit underwhelming, but it reflects life and life is sometimes a slow burn.
I gave it a 7.
It felt very procedural to me and there wasn't enough dynamism to the characters--everything was so focused on the police investigation from minute one until the end that I felt like there was no way to really anchor yourself in the movie. Emma Watson's character was underused as well. She really only had a few legitimate scenes, and they were flat as hell.
It sucks because the concepts were fantastic—the religious hysteria, the imagery of the Satanic cult (which was insanely creepy and well-shot)—I just felt like the script was lacking. The characters felt half-written, and the entire psychological aspect of the regression psychoanalysis was poorly integrated.
It's not a godawful film, but I was definitely disappointed.
*****SPOILERS*******
This movie was a total mess. It might have made sense to make this 25 or 30 years ago when things like massive satanic conspiracies and junk psychology like memory regression still had actual adherents, but only wingnuts still believe in such drivel now.
The movie could have approached its subject -- satanic cults -- as though there actually were a real and widespread threat (with a real Satan or not). There's plenty of horror and scifi movies that treat insane premises seriously and are quite entertaining. But this one didn't do that. As soon as Thewlis opened his mouth, it was clear he was promoting totally discredited quackery that was going to guarantee the investgation took the wrong path.
No one had to tell me that the father and brother were not revealing memories of actual events but instead reflecting the paranoid fantasies of the cop and the psychologist. Thewlis basically tells the father what he wants him to say before he hypnotizes him. I remember the very real McMartin and North Carolina daycare trials and the role that "counseling" played in generating the absurd and obviously false testimony of all these children that destroyed several actual people's lives. I saw this movie when it really happened in the 1990s, so I knew how where it was going five minutes in.
The only suspense was if or when these idiots -- Hawkes, Thewlis, the chief, etc. -- were going to get a rude awakening. All those scenes of satanic hoodoo were going nowhere, and most viewers would have realized that from the start. Meanwhile, the main characters weren't believable anyway -- none of them. For example, Hawkes' sudden and complete reversal inspired by one little fact undermined everything we'd seen him think and do to that point. And the fact? Of course it substituted the most trendy possible current boogeyman for those real 1990s witch trials -- gay hating is a worse conspiracy than satanism. Could anything be more forced and contrived?
You can like whatever you like, but the critics are unanimously trashing this movie for a reason -- it sucked.
The critics are really unfair ... this is a good movie!
Like the characters in the film, this movie's biggest adversary is ignorance. This was the best "horror" movie I've seen in quite some time, and it's because the movie has a sophisticated understanding of human nature and room for nuance. Most people cannot accept this and need a big monster or Satanic rite at the climax of the movie, otherwise they are disappointed. They claim to be appalled by Satanism, and then they are disappointed when they don't get to watch. Sickening. This movie has its cake and eats it to: it taps into all of the horror of the Satanic ritual abuse hysteria while peeling back the curtain and revealing to us why our mind creates these phantoms.
I guess critics and audiences just don't have good taste in thrillers. Just look at the writer/director's career if you want clear evidence that this movie suffers from prejudice. Open You Eyes, The Others, The Sea Inside... two of the best thrillers in recent years and an Oscar-nominated foreign-language drama. This director is operating on a level most horror directors never even attempt. Look at this movie again and you will see layers and layers beyond the surface. Most critics see a movie once and review it with very little time to analyze it. If you watched five other bad horror movies on the same day, you might be forgiven for lumping this one in. But seriously, this movie was close to perfect for what it attempted. The haters are just plain wrong about this one. Time will tell.