I'm not sure what so many critics liked about this

Rating: 3/10 (6 July 2018)

My taste in films is normally fairly well aligned with critics. I like mainstream movies and arthouse films, and when something appeals to both kinds of audiences, it's usually a pretty solid bet that I will like it. This movie, from its reviews, seemed to fit that bill. I came out of it, more than anything else, confused.
The confusion didn't come from the plot of the movie, but from the sense that maybe I'd missed something. What was it about this film that made it stand out to people. Granted, Toni Collette is always good and she is here as well, and the cinematography/art direction was good. But the movie just isn't that good otherwise.
First, there's the girl. The promo materials focus on her a lot, even though she's a rather secondary character in the film. I don't like it when people are presented as being creepy simply because they are strange or unusual. The girl was not creepy to me. She seemed like she was just autistic or something.
Second, there is nothing scary about the movie. At all. While I give it credit for not resorting to jump scares, I just didn't find the atmosphere very scary. There was a lot of good emotional depth to it, especially Toni Collette's character, but it seemed like it was trying to be creepy and failing. The movie would have functioned way better as a drama about loss than it does as a horror film.
Third, it had elements that it presented as twists that I thought were astoundingly obvious and that it telegraphed way too much. I don't want to spoil anything, so that's all I'll say about that.
Fourth, I thought Gabriel Byrne was seriously miscast. I like him a lot as an actor, but he was too old for the role, seeming more like a grandfather than a father, and he lacked intensity and vigor that it seemed like his character should have had. It was distracting to me whenever he was in a scene.
All in all, a disappointment.