Slightly drab at times

Rating: 7/10 (25 May 2015)

At its best, this movie is a well executed story about overcoming loss and trauma. It's also an interesting look at the difficulties of parenthood -- or at least how I imagine it might be at times, since I don't have any kids of my own. It's also a movie about alienation. As such, I think it works really well at times, even though those themes have been explored in many movies before.
As a horror movie, it's rather uneven and at times extremely by the book (see what I did there?). There aren't that many scares, it's more of a tension and uneasy feeling building throughout the movie -- and that comes a lot more from the feeling of anxiety and alienation that's felt through the mother-son relationship and their troubles than the actual horror elements of the movie. I found it a lot more disturbing to watch their family problems than the ghost/monster elements. Because the monster isn't really very well developed. It gets extremely little screen time, which can be very effective sometimes, but here you kind of forget about it for long stretches of time. After a while you kind of think "oh, right, there's this monster in the movie too". And that elephant trumpet sound effect that's supposed to sound like the monster screeching? Is that some kind of joke? I do like the scene where they first find and read the book, though. That was creepy. Other than that, this is standard "haunted house/possession" stuff.
Another thing I didn't like in the movie was the soundtrack, or rather lack thereof. Whenever there is music, it's absolutely standard horror movie stuff. But through a lot of the movie, it's absolutely quiet. There are movies where this works great, but here I really felt something missing and it got a bit depressing at times. Combined with a rather washed-out lighting throughout the whole movie, and its slow pace, it all felt rather drab and slow in some stretches, and not in an entirely good way.