Scary but bogs down at the end

Rating: 6/10 (19 August 2011)

Josh Lambert (Patrick Wilson) and wife Renai (Rose Byrne) are happily married and have three kids. Then, after moving into a new house, one of their kids Dalton (Ty Simkins) falls into a coma...for no reason at all. They take care of him at home but then scary things happen. Rose starts hearing noises and seeing strange people around the house. They figure the house is haunted and has affected their son. They move to a new house and quickly realize it's NOT the house that is haunted.
Pretty good evil spirit story. I avoided this like the plague when it came out because of the PG-13 rating. ALL the PG-13 horror films I've seen (except for "The Ring") have been boring and stupid. This was praised by critics so I decided to give it a try on DVD. It was much better than other PG-13 horror films. It IS well made and acted and there were some very scary moments...but it's far from perfect. For one thing after it's established the couple has three kids the other two seem to disappear completely when they move to a new house. Also it has those incredibly annoying jump scare moments. What's even MORE annoying is the writer and director said they tried to avoid using them! There's also at least three fairly long sequences with people wandering around in dark houses and places...and these scenes are deadly boring and bring the movie to a screeching halt. And I HATED the terrible "it's not over" ending. Still it did scare me and the acting is good across the board especially by Lin Shaye. It's also nice to see Barbara Hershey in a small role. So--I give it a marginal recommendation.