Two different ways to haunt

Rating: Null/10 (2 November 2015)

There are different modes to convey horror, mechanisms that control it; what it comes down to is how a viewer is placed in the vicinity of horror he feels to be there. (it doesn't matter if it is actually there and films that laboriously explain why and how waste their breath)
The story here is about this in a way that makes it clear; a crime author comes to live with his family in the house where gruesome murders took place, aiming to write a book about it. Right away we have a viewer placing himself on the scene of horror. Reality in this house is not the same as in any other house, there's a story that lingers.
The very first night he discovers something else that lingers - a box containing footage of murders in the attic, a set of images that contain horror.
So there are two different placements here, one powerful and eerie, the other silly. The contrast between them is so stark that if ever a horror film school comes about, this should be taught. It will be more insight than film schools deliver in a year.
One placement is anchored in these mini-films from the attic. The films themselves are strange, eerie and the most lasting thing about the whole film. Each one of them culminates with murder of course, the grisly stuff we've come to see, throats slashed etc. But more pertinently about the kind of horror they give rise to. Each one is a little more elaborately staged, making us grope in the dark of a house in search of horror we know is coming. Each one contains a hidden reflection of the boogeyman on the scene. Each one is filmed by an unseen presence. Nothing at all is explained of them but taken together they suggest malevolence that spills from them.
The other placement simply has weird things happening around the house at night, the usual apparitions, noises from the attic, that before long we come to understand as supernatural in origin. It's all as contrived as it sounds on that end and seems to come from a lesser film. Nothing is intricately sketched in this set of images, no hidden reflections. Everything is explained about them in due time.
And you'll see what I mean by looking at the stories that evolve from each set of images.
One gives rise to a frightening reality; someone in an eerie mask has been out there for a long time committing atrocity to some inscrutable purpose, a devious mind who has hid in sleepy suburbias like this and might be out there now, watching. The story emanates from what the images conceal (with a little help from a policeman).
The other story is formulaic fantasy foisted on us by an "occult expert", simply delivered by a talking head to a camera; nonsense about a Babylonian deity that actually lives in images and comes out to literally harness souls. Here we have "devious" scares and then a full story comes up to explain them.
In both cases we end up in theory with much the same thing; evil that defies sense, hides in and inhabits images and spills out from them to haunt the place. But what a world of difference between them. Don't listen to me; what part did you find eerie?