Two loving parents, three children, the oldest of which is a very bright college student working on an invention intended to provide electricity through air.
Very early on, the parents die in an auto accident, and the oldest son quits college to work in a hardware store and care for his younger siblings. The scenes of the family adjusting to this new life with out parents are very good. I definitely felt the sadness and frustration of each of them as they attempt to be responsible and do their parts to keep their now-smaller family functioning.
The characters are written well and acted well. No over-the-top wailing, the little girl is refreshingly not portrayed as helpless. The neighbors feel for the siblings and bring sympathy, advice, friendship & meals.
The oldest son continues to work on his invention in the garage and it is at this point the supernatural shenanigans begin. Unwittingly, he keeps his machine on and it opens/weakens the door between living and dead.
At first, it's just the little girl who experiences their parents talking to her, giving her advice to give to her brothers. Helpful Mom-Ghost changes their calendar each day for them. Eventually they are all convinced their parents are really communicating with them and that they need to keep working on the invention.
It's then that the film takes a turn. The range of the invention, much like wi-fi, extends to other houses. Neighborhood dogs start barking at things only they can sense, and their widower neighbor starts seeing his dead wife. Oddly, the children's' parents are no longer around. They've been replaced by the ghost of a child murderer who lived in their house previously, and, unlike their parents' ghosts, this one can grab them, open doors, and I guess maybe kill them.
It's just downhill from here. The neighbor steals the invention so he can get his wife back, two of the kids are trapped in an underground tunnel, the oldest kid's girlfriend has to rescue them. Lots of running around, fighting, screaming. It's all just too incongruent with the rest of the film.
At what point did the parent ghosts just go away? Why is any one ghost stronger than any other? Is it even ghosts or is it all demons? And if it's all demons, why were they being helpful and nice at all? Why not just BAM! Door is open, let's wreck havoc on humans?
Lots of clichés too. The house haunted by a bad guy who lived there and comes back to kill some more. The Scary Basement (Just once, I'd love to see a horror film in which the basement is the place where the pool table and cheesy home bar is.) The ghosts or demons go from barely being able to make their presence known to full on manifesting corporeal hands in like a day. And last, but not least, the cliché of "We are now having a happy ending scene because we destroyed the invention, thus closing the spirit realm, but one naughty demon has stayed behind to move the little girl's doll around, just in case this movie is popular enough for a sequel".
This movie was first two thirds really good with lots of promise, and last third was totally same-old, same-old.
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