I do like horror movies, in spite of what a lot of my reviews might say. The thing is, though, I like horror movies that are done well…and unfortunately, despite the trailer looking really intriguing, this movie fell short of a lot of my expectations.
The concept of this movie was an interesting one, to an extent, with an eight-year-old child believing he was hearing voices in the walls and his parents believing it was just his overactive imagination. But to be honest, I didn’t really like any of the adult characters in the movie. Peter’s dad was clearly emotionally and mentally abusive, even if he wasn’t physically (locking a child in a cellar is not appropriate discipline) and his mother was so completely beaten down that I just saw her as a weak-willed person who refused to protect her son even in a token way. And don’t get me started on the teacher, but I will say this: if you believe that a child is being abused by their parents and you sneak your number to them, they call and ask for help, and then have to hang up…don’t call back on the number they called you on. And if you do that, for goodness’ sake, don’t say to the parent who answers, ‘Oh, I think (child’s name) just called me.’ I’m sorry, but that was something that pulled me right out of the movie, because of how incredibly stupid that action was.
There wasn’t really any reason to care about any of the characters in the movie apart from Peter. His fellow student who was bullying him was just annoying…and quite frankly, I was just waiting for him to get his comeuppance.
I’ve mentioned before (probably so many times that blog readers are sick of it) that what you don’t see is scarier than what you do see…and unfortunately, this movie was yet another one that ignored that concept. Sadako from Ringu was scary. I’ll even give you Samara from the American remake. But it’s honestly tiresome to see so many movies copy something that worked once, instead of using their own ideas.
To be honest, there was a lot of potential in this movie, but it fell so short of the mark. There was no reason to care about most of the characters…and the actions of one of the ‘good’ characters just hindered the safety of an abused child. Also, the ending of the movie was really hard to suspend my disbelief, because why would someone living in the walls be so supernaturally strong as seemed to be the case in this movie?
Unfortunately, I can’t recommend watching this movie. Too many cheap scares and not much of an original idea.
My search for a well-made, interesting, actually good horror movie is going to continue for a long time yet, I believe.
Ink of Blood 