I didn't enjoy this, but perhaps I was in a bad mood. Right from the start, though, it got on my nerves. In the opening scenes, we discover a youngish professional couple at home, and it becomes obvious they work in the arts. Various everyday domestic events take place, while their young child plays outside with a talking Action Man figure near a body of water. And then, guess what? Discovering the drowned body of the child, a parent lets out a howl of grief......
What film am I watching? Don't Look Now, of course, with Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie. Except that isn't: it's Half Light, with Demi Moore, and some bloke off the telly.
But I'm sorry to have to tell the Director, Craig Rosenberg: Nicholas Roeg, you're not.
And so the film goes on, a bit of this and a bit of that, a bit of Les Diaboliques, a bit more of Don't Look Now (fey psychic women), a bit of the Shining (writer's block), a bit of the Wicker Man, and none of it quite as good as the original.
And I'm sorry, but while I'm being rude - the music. Composer: Brett Rosenberg. Wouldn't be a relative of yours, would he? All this terrible, oppressive, wistful plinky-plonky noodling on the piano. A hint about the music: if you want to create a supernatural effect with music (i.e. a tape recorder that switches itself on) then if you have to shut the soundtrack up specially so this can happen, you need to consider the possibility that you might be overdoing the soundtrack in the first place. Or worse, your audience might find find itself wondering whether the music is really supernatural at all, or just your relative at it again. Listen: some of the scariest moments in film take place in absolute silence.
And the plot doesn't stand up to scrutiny. I can't really say why without introducing spoilers, but in very general terms, it's one of those complex conspiracies that implausibly depend on everything happening just so. If you look at it all from the point of view of the villains, there's just too many things that could go wrong. I mean, what would have happened if she'd asked the policeman about the lighthouse on her first walk into the village? (That question will make sense if you see the film). Things don't go wrong, of course, or not until the authors want them too, because the authors haven't really thought it through from that point of view: their only intent is to attempt to deceive the audience. And we know it; you have failed to weave the magic spell that ever lets us forget it.
And I'm sorry, for me that opening rip-off, whether cynical plagiarism or just incompetent homage, meant I could never even get started.
What film am I watching? Don't Look Now, of course, with Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie. Except that isn't: it's Half Light, with Demi Moore, and some bloke off the telly.
But I'm sorry to have to tell the Director, Craig Rosenberg: Nicholas Roeg, you're not.
And so the film goes on, a bit of this and a bit of that, a bit of Les Diaboliques, a bit more of Don't Look Now (fey psychic women), a bit of the Shining (writer's block), a bit of the Wicker Man, and none of it quite as good as the original.
And I'm sorry, but while I'm being rude - the music. Composer: Brett Rosenberg. Wouldn't be a relative of yours, would he? All this terrible, oppressive, wistful plinky-plonky noodling on the piano. A hint about the music: if you want to create a supernatural effect with music (i.e. a tape recorder that switches itself on) then if you have to shut the soundtrack up specially so this can happen, you need to consider the possibility that you might be overdoing the soundtrack in the first place. Or worse, your audience might find find itself wondering whether the music is really supernatural at all, or just your relative at it again. Listen: some of the scariest moments in film take place in absolute silence.
And the plot doesn't stand up to scrutiny. I can't really say why without introducing spoilers, but in very general terms, it's one of those complex conspiracies that implausibly depend on everything happening just so. If you look at it all from the point of view of the villains, there's just too many things that could go wrong. I mean, what would have happened if she'd asked the policeman about the lighthouse on her first walk into the village? (That question will make sense if you see the film). Things don't go wrong, of course, or not until the authors want them too, because the authors haven't really thought it through from that point of view: their only intent is to attempt to deceive the audience. And we know it; you have failed to weave the magic spell that ever lets us forget it.
And I'm sorry, for me that opening rip-off, whether cynical plagiarism or just incompetent homage, meant I could never even get started.