Too slow for its own good.

Rating: 3/10 (20 June 2018)

Recent reviews i had read insisted that this film was described as a whole range of things from an original classic to a terrifying horror and even a game changer that's as scary as The Exorcist. I've even seen people tell me that they are horror 'veterans' and found this film to be one of the scariest they have ever seen. Clearly in this case, they are not horror veterans; and i imagine they probably found something like Gremlins to be utterly horrific.
As you can probably tell after seeing these reviews I had hopes going into this movie. I wont say high hopes because I've been let down too many times by those kind of reviews before.
To start with the positives, the acting in this film is as good as it gets from veteran actors Toni Collette (who is outstanding) and Gabriel Byrne to the younger actors in the film who played their children. The acting is so good that i felt the trauma and the tension within in that they themselves were feeling which is a really heavy concept throughout the entirety of the film. So A* for that. Also, something I liked for the first half of the film is that there lies this eerie silence that builds up tensions but at the same time this is part of its downfall which leads me on to the negative aspects. The constant feeling of something feeling like it maybe going to happen looms around for way too long and in the end the error in this pacing leads you to become tireless and honestly, quite bored. In the cinema me and my friend turned to eachother wondering when some thing was about to happen, not just in the jump scares department but in its storytelling. The film goes on for way too long before you even have any idea what the plot actually is. All we really know is that there has been a trauma and it isn't until its too late, where you've almost began falling asleep (which may be a tad harsh) that a thing or two, literally, happen. A case could be made to slot this film into the drama category as opposed to the horror/thriller genre.
All in all i don't want to spoil this film too much for anyone. The film has terrific acting but its lack of plot and scares leaves you with little to take away from this experience. I believe that the film thinks its better and more original than it actually is, and in the end doesn't come close to the all time classics like The Exorcist. 5/10