It's kind of what you expect.

Rating: 6/10 (30 May 2012)

When you watch the trailer you get a feel, an impression, of what this movie is going to be like. Sure there are some creepy parts and a few gotchas that make you jump. However the connection to the story just isn't there.
I know this was based on a novel, and like many great novels this probably was not translated into film well. Though I have not read it myself, I can strongly suspect that is what has happened here.
There is a trend in horror movies as of late that is more disturbing than the movies themselves...they aren't scary. Just because you have a ghost doesn't mean that they have to resemble every knock off Japanese ghost from the Ring to the Grudge...and everything in between. We've seen those type of ghosts before. We need something different, something original. Perhaps Hollywood is all out of ideas. Perhaps they are all out of disturbing.
I gave this movie a 6 out of 10 because it was exactly what I expected it to be. It wasn't worse than I thought, but I wasn't pleasantly surprised. I like Daniel Radcliffe, Harry Potter. He is familiar and in time will be a better actor, but this wasn't the movie for him to show his acting chops.
I guess to sum it up, my 7 year old fell asleep in the first twenty minutes. When I was 7 and watched a scary movie I was scared witless...I couldn't sleep and probably woke my Mom and Dad up throughout the night.
It's what happens when they try to cram same ol' same ol' canned horror movie stuff into a PG-13 rating. If they had a rated R to work with it could have really helped by giving them something to work with. Alas, their philosophy is better to sell a few extra tickets than to produce a quality product.
With all that said...the movie was OK...and worth a watch if you happen to catch it with a free Redbox code like I did.