Spoiler Alert! Great movie but..stick to the script

Rating: 6/10 (7 June 2016)

This review contains one or two spoilerish statements. Look, I loved this movie. I loved the visuals, I loved the way it was sympathetic to the ghost (because ghosts are people too). But I have to foul it because my two most hated tactics were used far too liberally:
1. Using the movie's description to explain the movie's plot. "The stock market crashes and a distraught father kills his employees and his wife then turns the gun on his daughters"....am I the only one who saw absolutely none of this actually IN the movie and, having not read the write-up, was left wondering....why in the name of creation did this dude up and try to kill his kids? Also, if this movie is set during the stock market crash of the 1920's, which it certainly looks like in the beginning, why is it that five years later the girls' uncle is wandering around the current era? A little continuity would have been nice, especially for those of us who love period clothing.
2. Using the storyboard to tell the story. The 11 minutes of children's drawings at the beginning were utterly pointless. I could have done without the scene where dad drives the girls off a cliff, finds some cabin, and tries to kill his kids by shooting them in the head, too. Realistically, if the movie had started with the brother trying to find his nieces and just EXPLAINING to his girlfriend that they had gone missing, nothing would be lost. Except a lot of confusion.
The CGI was cool and I really loved the mini actress who played Victoria. She had a great range but unfortunately, couldn't carry off the entire plot by herself. The brother is missing from 80% of the plot and it seems like he's only there to show us that....to....I have no idea. It's pretty clear that the actor doesn't know why he's there either. I don't think it's his fault that he has like 11 lines and none of them further the movie in the slightest. At least he got more lines than dad, who has one, spoken in a weird dream the brother has about him: another scene the movie could have done without.
This movie seems to be "about" the girls' stepmom, the contrast between her and mama. At the end of the movie, I ended up feeling sorry for the kid who went with her instead of the ghost, since throughout the movie she proves herself to be an unemployed, irresponsible, self-absorbed and generally uncaring addict. Literally the worst mother imaginable. If this movie was going for my heartstrings, it missed.
I feel like "mama" was the only sympathetic character. And they killed HER off before the movie even started. The end result was a movie that is also a bad joke. What happens when a Canadian and Spanish film maker get together? The story is overly complicated, overly emotional, disjointed, and too long.