Dramatically powerful, but marred by excessive comic relief

Rating: 7/10 (16 October 2009)

The film blends some divergent genre styles, and mostly succeeds. Where the film goes wrong is in too much ambition to be all things to all people, and in so doing, diminishes its own viability. The entire Oda Mae charlatan/psychic side line is distracting; Whoopi Goldberg plays her comic relief part way over the top, and draws far too much attention to herself. Somebody must have thought "Believers in the paranormal will like this, but let's pander to the skeptics by letting them laugh at it, and then they'll like it too." However, the self-jabbing sequence is executed awkwardly. This leaves the film with a confused identity, lost somewhere in a void between 6th Sense and Ghostbusters.
Patrick Swayze plays his part well, except in scenes with Whoopi, where he gets oddly comedic. This makes her the focus, even though the tragic circumstances of his murder parting him forever from his love should be the cornerstone of the story. Demi Moore's acting is better than it usually is, but what's up with that hair of hers? She looks like she's going trick-or-treating as Ringo Starr. Most of the remaining cast are pretty decent, except for the dead souls that haunt Whoopi. They were just annoying.
The plot develops well, and the memorably haunting "Unchained Melody" theme was the perfect choice. The eerie black shadow creatures, with their shrill howling and blindly malevolent behavior, were suitably demonic in their design. The murder mystery and suspenseful danger to an innocent person is skillfully done.
Oda Mae should have been left on the cutting room floor. Otherwise, this film succeeds pretty well in its unusual genre-mixing approach.