It's a horror film. Except it isn't really terribly horrifying. It's about some book writer woman who suffers from Agorophobia who decides to have a holiday to help her get over it. On the way she discovers a strange looking old house, spookily enough just after her car breaks down. It seems strangely familiar to her. She decides it's the perfect place to start writing her new book so she rents the place. Then spooky things start happening to her. Then some people die. Then some more spooky things happen. This is because the house was a brothel in the war and the prostitutes were all murdered. Once they've killed the people responsible though, these ghosts happy and burn the house down and stuff.


That house is very pretty, it has to be said


It's so agonisingly slow moving for the first 40-50 minutes that I ended up turning it off. It would have helped if many of the characters involved (though there aren't many) weren't so utterly hateful. Particularly some boyfriend type bloke of writer woman who seems not only sexist but incredibly racist as well. In about 30 seconds he manages to insult just about every ethnic minority. Incredible. In fact that seems to be pretty much his only role in the film. He pretty much disappears after that. When something does happen you don't get a gory payoff either. Which could at least make up for the slow pace. The ghosts don't represent that much of a danger to most people either as the ghosts only seem interested in killing the people responsible for their own deaths. So that isn't particularly scary. It does make a vaguely interesting mystery story when it's shown how the writer woman is connected to the house. So for about 10 minutes at the end it's kind of interesting with some delightful over acting from the well to do but very infirm well to do man who owns the house. You just have to slog through so much incredible boredom and nothing happening to get to a payoff that is barely worth it.

back to film reviews