Copious use of plot holes to disguise general lack of substance

Rating: 1/10 (22 April 2006)

I missed the first 5 minutes of the movie, but I think I was able to follow all the movie just fine. It appears that I must also provide the following disclaimer, "I haven't played the video games (and personally, now that I know its based on a video game, that would have been enough of a hint to avoid this movie)". While I do like a movie that doesn't surrender its content to the viewer without some mental effort....this movie is far from that. Without giving away too much of the plot, this movie uses too many glimpses of a plot line and never delivers. It throws in token opportunities to leave the viewer with a sense of reasonable uncertainty but then aborts on the follow-through. Case example-at one point the main matriarch of the sanctuary/church warns the protagonist to not trust anything the "demon" will tell her. But, when she then immediate goes and confronts the demon (this is within minutes of the warning) she takes all that the demon tells her as complete fact without even struggling with the concept that it could be a lie (and, of course, the demon is telling the truth). I wonder if this was purely out of convenience, like the developers of the story don't want to now deal with this uncertainty at all. I expect this out of student-directed grade-school plays. The timelines also don't match (I can't expand on this without ruining the plot), character responses to presented situations lack any authenticity, pure cardboard (over-reacting, huge under-reacting, loosing track of their main motivation in the face of minor distractions (for instance, I am looking frantically for my lost child who I think is in immediate mortal danger....but I decide to search the school's records of a school she has never been enrolled in)). Further, the use of plot twists and clues is ridiculous. At one point, the protagonist finds a piece of a hotel room key in a rather bizarre place. This seems to have an unquestionable significance to the protagonist, indicating that her child MUST be in the hotel. The protagonist's husband, while searching for his wife, directs his efforts into discovering the old police records for the town, and immediately focuses his search on a barbershop (it is presumed) largely because it was owned by the deceased father of a police officer that is initially trying to help him. Low and behold, it is the right choice of action, because the barbershop files hold cornerstone evidence on the whole situation....how clever that husband of hers.....
Do yourself a favour, wait for this one on the DVD rack.
Cyanide