Haunting

Rating: 7/10 (15 October 2008)

I wrote a pretty favorable review of this under another name when I saw it in the theater. Having now watched it several times on TV, I felt it worth popping in here with a followup review. Believe it or not, I think SH plays better on TV, where its hypnotic pacing and wonderfully bizarre sets can be appreciated at one's leisure, especially, if one has a DVR. I agree with the poster who says SH is not a horror film but a nightmare piece. That is exactly what it is, and in that way, it works quite well. Rhada Mitchell is a convincingly distraught mother searching for her lost child, and she reminds me a good deal of Naomi Watts' similarly distraught character in the American remake of THE RING. No harm in that. The fiery climax with the devil worshipers or whatever the hell they are supposed to be is on the awesomely stupid side, and it is nothing we haven't seen before, except maybe for that barbed wire running itself up into Alice Krige's pooky and then ripping her apart. The devil kid is also pretty spooky. The very ending, with Mitchell and the daughter at home but in another dimension from the husband, is haunting in the truest sense of the word. A great ending to a pretty good, but not great, film.