I watched this movie when it came out, and I just watched it again, as I was about to watch Chapter 2, and this movie was so forgettable that I couldn't remember anything about it. The movie is generally pretty bland and a bit disjointed from a story point of view. It's a horror movie that suffers from the problem of having more startling points than scary points.
Patrick Wilson is a fairly reliable actor. I wouldn't say he's A-list, but he is a solid upper B-list. I thought he did a very good job in The Conjuring, and one of the problems with this movie echoes that movie. See, the Conjuring didn't actually have any conjuring in it. This movie is not particularly insidious. Strangely, this movie reminds me of The Conjuring in a few other ways, too. The way there is an angry spirit followed by an expert who comes in to try to fix things, and things don't always go as planned.
They say this movie is from the makers of Saw and Paranormal Activity, and it has very little in common with either of them. It doesn't have the visceral agonizing that Saw had, and it doesn't have the boring, mild annoyance that Paranormal Activity brought out in me. I may be painting this movie to be worse than it was at this point. The fact is, it was okay.
Ty Simpkins plays one of the sons, Dalton. He's the focal point of the movie, and he has almost nothing to do in most of it. He lapses into a coma pretty much when the movie begins, and that's what the parents fight against for the rest of the film. Because, you see, the coma is just aphysical manifestation of what is happening to his soul - which is in The Further (also referred to as the Ether or The Place of The Dead or something similar).
The movie reads quite a bit like Poltergeist. The big difference is the sheer number of ghosts, demons, and other deadies that happen to show up briefly. When I say briefly, I am referring to the sudden existence and disappearance of scary ghost creatures all over the place. They are often behind people who they are intended to scare, so I'm not sure that they are being as effective as they could be.
There is one guy in particular - seen to the right here - who looks like they got a bargain version of Darth Maul. I don't know if he's scary or not - I was too distracted wondering if he was going to whip out a Lightsaber. He didn't, by the way. When and if you see this movie, you needn't be distracted by the same concern.
Direction was okay
Story was odd and a bit bland
Acting was generally pretty good
Dialog was convincing
Cinematography was okay
2.5/5