"How did the voice of reason become the bad guy here?"

Rating: 7/10 (9 July 2012)

In checking the user ratings for this film, I'm finding that my initial suspicions about younger viewers hailing this film as one of the 'scariest of all time' to be based on age. I'm over sixty, and I saw "The Exorcist" during it's original release in 1973. Let me tell you, that was one scary flick. My son, who's thirty five thought this film was right up there in the fright department, but I wound up pretty much ho-humming my way through the entire thing. So my theory here is that one's susceptibility to being manipulated by a film's gimmicks decreases with age.
There are other things working against the film as well. For one, the tone and mood of the set up was filmed too colorfully for a horror film. Virtually all of the scenes occurred during daylight hours, so any attempt at suspense was dissipated by lack of atmosphere. There were a couple of well placed cryptic elements like the misplaced box of sheet music and the bloody hand print, but their impact seemed negligible in the larger scheme of things.
When the theme turned to astral projection and out of body experience, I felt I was watching one of those Sci-Fi cable channel documentaries, thereby relegating the story to a ghost hunters exercise rather than a horror flick. Turning the principal disbeliever (Patrick Wilson as Josh Lambert) into an active participant in the demon hunt seemed sort of contrived, and the disturbing finale was a little too late to save the picture over all. Inattentive viewers might miss the nuance of the final minutes of the story; for me that was one of the few hooks that forced me to think about what had happened.
One interesting observation as I discussed this film with my son was his reaction to the background music provided by Tiny Tim with his version of 'Tiptoe Through the Tulips'. When Herbert Khaury recorded that song it was nothing more than a novelty tune done in falsetto that made Top 40 in most markets. Because of it's use in the picture, my son thought it was a truly creepy song and couldn't reconcile himself to my description of it's origin. For my part, I tried to see it his way and in a way I guess he could have been right, but then I'd picture Tiny Tim and the whole thing fell apart.
Followers of 'out of body' science will probably find the ideas explored here to be presented well enough to validate some of their own ideas about the concept. For myself, I thought the depiction of the demon was rather well done, but it was too little too late to make the picture truly horrifying. The effectiveness of the ending will probably be lost on most viewers as well, unless you take the time to rewind the last couple of minutes like I did trying to make sense of what happened and who or what made it out of The Further.