Decent horror

Rating: 7/10 (10 October 2012)

Ellison (Ethan Hawke) is a writer of true-life crime accounts, which explains why he moves his family (wife and two children) into a house where a mass murder took place. When he finds a box of super 8 movies in the loft, he watches them all even after seeing that the first one shows the murders which took place in this very house. Keen watchers of this sort of film will be expecting creepy occurrences and unexplained noises at this point and, sure enough, they arrive right on cue. Ellison clearly is not a keen watcher of this sort of film, because he not only ignores these unexplained phenomena, he digs deeper into the mystery. Run for the hills, Ellison, and take your family with you!
I'm not very good at spotting twists, wrinkles and the like, but this film held no surprises for me at all. In particular, I spotted the catch towards the end when it was telegraphed earlier on. But for all that, this is quite a good movie of its type. Without being loaded up with scares, it is pretty creepy all the way through, and it gets under way quickly and without excessive preamble. Ethan Hawke forms a solid centre in a movie which is very nearly a single-hander.
Moderately scary, and keeps you interested.