Frighteningly dull

Rating: 3/10 (11 May 2008)

I can't think that anyone except the most tirelessly devoted of horror movie fans will find anything of interest in this film. A script so corny you can smell the butter and clichés by the truck load. Add to that some really hammy acting. To be fair, John Cusack does his best  but at the moments of greatest 'horror', his expression seems to be saying that even he can't believe he's been reduced to doing stuff like this. Samuel L. Jackson is just completely wasted: a big bucks name used for no other reason than to sell the thing at the box office.
In "Danse Macabre", Stephen King gives the nod to Coleridge's idea of the 'suspension of disbelief', saying that such a thing is made possible in the horror genre (in whatever medium) if the reader or viewer has a complete emotional involvement with the characters. That's what's lacking here. Mike Enslin is such an arrogant, rude, self-important a**hole that you really don't care what happens to him. Even after the rather tame and predictable back-story comes out, you don't feel much different. By three-quarters of the way through, I couldn't care less about him any more and just wanted it to end  preferably in his death.
As a postscript, I watched this on the same evening as 'The Machinist'. This, by complete contrast, is a genuinely creepy examination of a deeply-troubled mind  and not a cliché or cheap trick in sight. Watch this instead if you want to see how it should be done.