I freely admit to being a sucker for a good ghost story but feel no issue with prejudices when I say the movie delivers.
While there were a few problematic aspects, such as the night when the proclamation was made that there was a darkness all around inside the house which cut to a scene of everyone being sound asleep. I suppose it was the consistent use of scotch that helped with this!
That aside there is plenty of atmospheric creepiness with an easy mystery of ghosts that overlie some sort of ill defined ancient evil that had been uncovered. Nice layered evil that had no problem showing us the first layer of quite well done (yes there is a pun there) ghosts. It was, however, the deeper layer of undefined evil that I found, in the end, to be the most fun.
It was this later part that I view as quite Lovecraftian. The unseen unnamed "darkness" that is the real driving force of a quite haunted house. It is hinted at but never shown and in the end remains apart from the rest of the story that is told. Hats off for this added layer. The easily solved mystery with the impossible mystery added in was delightfully refreshing.
I would also add that a careful eye will catch a reference to the "Miskatonic River" in one of the newspapers shown during the initial end credits.
Sweet!
While there were a few problematic aspects, such as the night when the proclamation was made that there was a darkness all around inside the house which cut to a scene of everyone being sound asleep. I suppose it was the consistent use of scotch that helped with this!
That aside there is plenty of atmospheric creepiness with an easy mystery of ghosts that overlie some sort of ill defined ancient evil that had been uncovered. Nice layered evil that had no problem showing us the first layer of quite well done (yes there is a pun there) ghosts. It was, however, the deeper layer of undefined evil that I found, in the end, to be the most fun.
It was this later part that I view as quite Lovecraftian. The unseen unnamed "darkness" that is the real driving force of a quite haunted house. It is hinted at but never shown and in the end remains apart from the rest of the story that is told. Hats off for this added layer. The easily solved mystery with the impossible mystery added in was delightfully refreshing.
I would also add that a careful eye will catch a reference to the "Miskatonic River" in one of the newspapers shown during the initial end credits.
Sweet!