Hospitalized after the death of her ill mother in a house fire, Anna (Browning) returns home to find that her mother's in-home nurse is now dating her father. With no memory of that night, she is haunted by ghostly events and she fears that Rachael (Banks) may have been responsible for the tragedy.
A remake of a Japanese film (A Tale of Two Sisters), I can't help but feel I'm
watching a very atmospheric TV series from the CW channel. Populated with oh-so-pretty teenagers and a few token adults and set in the creepy-by-association state of Maine, I will not deny that it definitely has a decent eerie, gothic sensibility. The imagery is well-played, and the tension of the ghostly events paced almost perfectly.
Unfortunately I personally can't get past the Revenge-esque, Pretty Little Liars feel of it.
There are some twists, and I won't reveal them here, but a person who is attentive will pick up on them way, way in advance. Let's just say I was prepared by a plot line during my viewership of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and picked up on it before the body was pulled from the water, and leave it at that.
As a movie for makers, this was so-so. A lot of the film's appeal, the picturesque New England countryside and strikingly atmospheric, tension building shots, are silent or backed with orchestral scores. You will miss jump-scare clues given by the ghosts if you're concentrating on your hands. There are stretches of dialogue where quite a bit can get done, though, so if your project isn't on a deadline, this is a great scary film to run in the background if you don't mind stopping to watch the screen once in a while.
Only two laugh out loud moments, and no other counts recorded by me during the viewing, however there probably should have been an eyeroll or two over the plot twists, as I saw them coming far in advance. And the evil stepmother routine got a trifle cliched.
I gave this film a four out of five stars. I am tired of films populated by children, as though nothing noteworthy happens to adults over thirty, and even though I enjoy feeling clever, a plot twist like this one should not have been telegraphed so early in the film that I'm looking for clues that I'm right through half of it. If you enjoy American remakes of Japanese horror films, though, definitely give this one a shot.
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