Article by FisterRoboto of lefthandhorror.com
Directed by Phedon Papamichael
Written by Brad Keene
Starring: Elizabeth Rice, Thomas Dekker, Kelly Blatz, Jared Harris, and Adam Goldberg
A small Maryland town is gripped by a curse which causes residents to take their own life one after another.
I’m a sucker for religious-themed horror movies. I also love it when a film maker takes their time to unveil the real terror; I’m just not sure this film actually delivered much. It starts with a bang (you can thank me later for that) and spends the rest of the film trying to calculate exactly where it’s headed. I was lured in with the promise of Jared Harris (Mad Men), but he gets all of five minutes of screen time – I’m already upside down on this movie. Oh, wait, there’s still Adam Goldberg, well, not so much. This film is clumsily acted and told, Jared Harris notwithstanding.
Goldberg needs to stick to fighting stoner hicks like Clint in Dazed & Confused
The scares are funny at times, and that’s not a compliment. The CG looks like it was created by the local vocational school and stands out like a sore thumb. While I didn’t find this as terrible as The Devil Inside or The Apparition, this movie is destined to be on par with The Grudge 3, The Messengers, and so on. I enjoyed the slow reveal, I hate to see the veil ripped off the face of a horror flick in the first 15 minutes. So, kudos for pacing, but I give it an official “meh” for the rest. It’s not so much a slow burn as it is a dull one.
