Unchilling Chiller

Rating: 3/10 (17 March 2012)

Thought this one would have been worth getting out of the house, paying admission and going to see on the big screen.
Boy was I wrong. Thankfully all I spent on this piece was time.
The premise sounded solid: young upwardly mobile loan officer has a curse thrown on her after she refuses an extension on an old woman's mortgage payments.
Sounds like an opportunity for some really scary scenes, themes and creepy images that will stick with you long after the movie is over.
Wish that was true. Producers use the same bit three times during the movie, a bit that was not scary the first time, just gross to be gross.
Nothing integral to the plot or that heightens the tension or shocks and horrifies, just things that show up like fake vomit to disgust rather than as the result of the character's pursuit of of her objective: to get the curse thrown off.
Lots of little, cheap stunts like that, moments the viewer just knows someone sat up during a production meeting and said " How cool would this be if we did XXXXX ? Real gross out man. Those kids will be talking about it for years !"
Another element that works against the movie is that it is filmed and lit like a TV sitcom: too bright, too colorful, too sunny. There seems to be no attempt to create a mood of foreboding, an atmosphere of tension and fear.
Gross out scenes can never take the place of something creepy, and disturbing happening as if all around the viewer.
Cheap shocks can't take the place of a movie experience where the viewer can actually imagine themselves in the same situation.That is the province of actual film making and is created via lighting, music, plot line, pacing and camera angles.
For instance the medium Alison Lohman and Justin long visit,Dileep Rao looks,sounds and acts like a salesmen from the Men's Wearhouse suit chain rather than a charismatic envoy of the supernatural world.
Nice cast, potentially interesting plot,some nice moments, acting is believable in most cases and a genuinely worthwhile plot twist along the way make the movie passably entertaining, but certainly no classic.
Filmed in too bright and brittle a manner to be a truly scary horror film.The lighting alone destroys the possibility of ever making the viewer a participant in the heroine's terror or even to win sympathy for her.
The rest of it is just silly filler posing as scary movie elements. Disappointing. Would be a "horror classic" if one saw it at age 8.