falls short.

Rating: 1/10 (18 October 2012)

in a truly great scary movie, you are simply immersed within it, and hopefully terrified by it.
when a scary movie goes bad, you can actually 'feel' the 'ideas' and 'tactics' being employed upon you. 'scary' scenes falter in execution and horror all of a sudden becomes comical and laughable.
this movie falls into the later.
ethan hawke gives his usual solid performance and the story itself i found to be more than satisfactory.
the problem, like with most modern scary movies nowadays, is in the rigid and straight forward concept and lack of execution.
i just don't get why scary movies are made in a story, story, sudden lough noise, story, story, scary scene, etc. type of format.
this puts so much pressure on the quality of the scary scenes when they do come, and more often than not they fail to deliver.
the first scene, in which the son rises out of the box with a "SCARY" face was laughable. and all throughout the movie, there were scary scenes which the entire theater were laughing at.
the scene where all the kids were running in slow motion did absolutely nothing for me other than get a 'ummmmm, OK?' reaction from me.
if you want to watch a good modern scary movie, watch 'the woman in black.' now that is a very well put together and conceptualized movie.
this movie plays it safe and fails to deliver scene after scene. skip this one.