very disappointing and boring beyond belief...

Rating: 1/10 (6 February 2005)

This movie is so slow, paint peels faster. It was just so SLOW. The things that were supposed to be mysterious, were really just annoying.
The dates on the grave stones was supposed to set this story in the late 1800's, but the story was so lame it didn't even seem right, so the "surprise" at the end really wasn't a surprise at all, I expected something like that.
To me, if your going to tell a story like that, you really have to bend over backwards to make the audience believe it, and this really didn't do it. It just seemed like a bad movie to me, and all the phony pretension and fake mysteriousness just make it fall flat.
Oh, and the part where they send a BLIND girl, yes, a BLIND girl out into the WOODS by herself, to go to town to get medicine, was just unbelievably stupid. At that point, I had to ask, what kind of idiot made this film? Does he think the audience are complete morons who are just going to believe ANYTHING? How does she know which way to go? People with sight get lost in the woods, how is a BLIND girl supposed to find her way? By losing her walking stick, and running?
I have admired some of the directors past films, but I'm certainly going to think twice before watching any more of his films. I couldn't sit through another stinker like this one.
I hate to be totally negative in a review, so I will say that the scenery was nice, the cinematography was beautiful, the acting was OK, as was the music score. But the script stank. The dialogue was so slow, it could bore you to tears. No matter how high the production values, nothing can save a bad script. I would have liked to have given it a higher rating, but when after watching it, you feel like you have wasted your time, it's hard to say anything good about that.
What I found most amazing was the high ratings in the votes. I'm amazed that anyone found the ending surprising. I see nearly half the votes came from outside the USA. The director no doubt has a lot of fans overseas.