It fails to meet expectations.

Rating: 5/10 (19 February 2019)

Part horror, part Lifetime original, and part evangelical PSA. I might be able to forgive the disjointed sappiness if every adult character weren't so unlikable and one-dimensional. The mood and pacing is all over the place. Between the suspense and thrills, which are mostly pretty good in themselves, the movie shoehorns in the most awkward sentimental and expositional scenes, accompanied by music that sounds as if it were taken from a made-for-tv soundtrack. The kind of backstory we get is: this is based on a true story, the Salem witch trials were actually good, and witches loudly proclaim their love for Satan as they curse innocent people. There is no interesting motive behind the haunting, and every line is written with maximum possible cheese. I may be disinclined to be so critical if anything in this movie were original, but it's more or less your standard religious horror fare. Witches are evil, demons possess people, and only a benevolent Christian or two can save you. I've seen everything done better, right down to the exorcism. The witch demon using telekinesis to shoot a rifle was new to me, but it was a low point among the intended scary moments (the other really bad one being the second part of the terrible laundry scene, where you are expected to believe that the witch's spirit can control the weather, but only a little), making me laugh out loud in a climactic moment when I should have been terrified. To be entirely fair, this movie is worse in hindsight. It has a good atmosphere, some pretty good scares, and doesn't kill the shock value with loud, orchestrated jump scares early on, like so many horror movies do. It's worth a viewing if you want something suspenseful and scary, which it is most of the time, but it certainly doesn't live up to the hype.