Freaky

Rating: 7/10 (14 June 2010)

I found this movie to be very effective. It's hard to find movies that can build genuine suspense and sustain it as well. This one immediately drew me in. It didn't matter that I was seeing it after all the hype, I think because of the acting job done by the two leads. They created characters that made me want to find out what happened. As opposed to, say, Away We Go, which I had to turn off because I really couldn't stand the couple being portrayed.
This is the simplest set-up possible: a man buys a video camera to record what goes on while he and his wife sleep. She senses that some sort of presence is visiting her, and over the course of the movie, the experiences intensify.
This movie does follow one of the major clichés of the horror film, which is the "smart people doing dumb things" syndrome. As the evil spirit begins to act more aggressively, the man only does more to antagonize it, and the girl doesn't really take any action.
I much preferred the unrated ending, as I think the version shown in theaters fell flat. Did Steven Spielberg really suggest that ending? It was a very lame choice that extinguished all the tension built up to that point. The alternate choice was a better payoff.