So…from a fairly good horror movie to one that, in my opinion, was nowhere near as good as it could have been.

Okay, so this movie was one that I booked in to see at the cinema without knowing anything about it other than it being a horror movie. After I booked it, YouTube then decided to play a trailer for the movie while I was watching a video…and the trailer was really creepy and immediately spiked my interest.

Unfortunately, this was a case of the movie not living up to its potential.

I really struggled to connect to Lee as a character. I had no idea why she’d joined the FBI in the first place…and it was extremely confusing why they had a whole setup to determine psychic abilities. There really wasn’t enough worldbuilding to set up why Lee’s superiors would assume that her intuition would indicate psychic ability.

I struggled a lot with my suspension of disbelief; not just because of the aforementioned ‘she must be psychic!’ but also because it felt like the movie didn’t make a whole lot of sense as a whole. Lee is told about ten cases and spends a whole montage listening to 911 calls and looking at crime scene photos…and when she’s asked to give a report on what she’s learned, she says something along the lines of, ‘Two of the families had shotguns in the house. Eight used knives. And one had a hammer.” And this number added up to eleven. Not ten. There is an eleventh crime scene found, but no one mentions that she’s identified eleven cases and not ten? The series Medium did a far better job when the main character talks about a third victim and it turns out one of the murdered women was pregnant.

Speaking of the FBI, this line made me quite literally roll my eyes: ‘The father’s wounds appear to be self-inflicted, but we can’t be sure until we’re sure.’ I just…huh? What happened to Forensics? CSI? They were on the scene; I saw the jacket saying CSI!

One thing I found strange about this movie was the use of the camera angles. When Lee was talking to Ruth, and later to Carrie Ann, the camera just showed her face and then the face of the person she was talking to. It felt kind of like the filming of the two people hadn’t even taken place in the same location, as there were hardly any scenes showing them in the same shot. I figured Lee and Carrie Ann were seated opposite each other, but both of them were looking to the side, so…who knows?

I was also really disappointed in the titular character of this movie, played by Nicolas Cage. Especially recently, I’ve found that Cage’s acting is very over the top…and while that worked in Renfield and Dream Scenario, it really pulled me out of the movie in this case. Not that that was hard to do.

Sadly, the only good thing I can say about this movie…in my opinion…is that the trailer was pretty good. And that’s it. Unfortunately, the movie did not live up to my expectations…and I was pretty bored throughout.

I wouldn’t recommend watching this movie, which is a shame, because it looked like it was going to be a really good, scary supernatural horror.