Your actual fright may be less than advertised...

Rating: Null/10 (20 April 2004)

For better and for worse, The Changeling has influenced every "ghost story" film since 1980. It was an OK movie with perhaps three good scares, but it initiated a formula which is now exhausted: Nancy Drew type clues are discovered (a secret, an old well, a hidden room, an illegitimate child, a spirit who cannot rest) and lead to other Nancy Drew type discoveries, eventually leading to a pat, unsatisfying resolution. Hollywood spends more time trying to convince you old ideas are fresh, than it would take to devise a new idea. As regurgitated in the Sixth Sense, Ghost, Session 9, the Devils Backbone, The Shining, The Others, A Stir of Echoes, The Lady in White, Sleepy Hollow, 13 Ghosts, Ghost Story, The Mothman Prophecies, Dark Water, The Fog, Flatliners, Poltergeist & any episode of MTVs fear... etc. there is no one left on the planet who doesn't GET IT. You know the story arc before you set foot in the theater. All of these movies forego legitimate scares to instead "touch" the viewer and put the deceased to rest. Freud has been very, very busy at the graveyard. Plodding procedure displaces fright. I can't even recall the last movie I was actually scared at. This is extremely tiresome.
It coincides exactly with the emergence of the phrase "bringing closure" pervading pop culture, and appearing in news stories that involve death, and it's that hoary goal that the modern ghost movie is preoccupied with. Unfortunately none of these movies offer you anything remotely frightening. It's post-psychological, "let's-put-the-ghosts-spirit-to-rest" hokum. Whatever fear people are feeling at this lame crop of movies they're bringing along or they have very weak spines. What Hollywood desperately needs is a ghost story where no one gives a damn about putting a spirit to rest, in which the ghosts are evil, people die horrible deaths, and the film scares the hell out of the audience... and I'm not talking about the "things suddenly appearing very close to the camera," or the "sudden loud phone ringing" variety.
Although the batch of conceits in this movie are OK, the fatal choice is made to have the protagonist be a journalist with investigative skills, who seeks/finds/follows a well-worn (and interminable!!) path of ghostly clues. Could anyone in our solar system be surprised when they discover the spirit of someone wronged is at the core of the disturbances? Worse, this main story thread intrudes before we've even seen the myth play out with any minor character (No! That one doesn't count! All of it is off-screen). Before the myth even gets established we're on our way to solving it. How boring!
It was very nice to see a cast of unknowns though. I can't imagine how awful this would have been with name talent in it. Brian Cox appears in a goofy part here. The movies absurd compression of time is a hoot. (The wife wears wears Victorian equestrian clothes, but her husband is still alive?) Perhaps best of all is an unintended (?) analogy about irresponsibilty in marketing. But all of this is insufficient to save the movie. I was revolted to see the wholesome nuclear family at the center of this movie escape their fate (seemingly) so I could not have been happier to see someone actually die when they finally did almost 2 hours into the movie, at which point it was way too little, too late.