This may be Lance Henriksen's best role yet since he starred in the TV series Millennium. The film itself is shot with a filter that mutes bright tones and gives a richness to every color. The actors outside of Henriksen are also quite good at their craft, even if the lead male thinks he's Jack Nicholson toward the end of the story. The pacing is done well, but the opening courtroom scene was unnecessary to the plot of the story. The film ratchets up rather quickly in its last minutes, turning into quite a Slasher film comparable to The People Under the Stairs and The House of the Devil. Henriksen, by the way, plays a real Christian just as Edward Woodward did in The Wicker Man (a character that backfired on the director who made the film to be antichrist instead of Christian, with the opposite result). I'd like to give this film higher than a 6, but the Twilight Zone stares and small-town weirdness provides a factor not suitable to this ghost story. Like most of the films Henriksen stars in, this one is a mish-mash of ideas that don't finish percolating before the story is finished.
Review of Dark Awakening
