This movie was just delightful, and I'm sure that's not the adjective you want to see used to describe what's supposed to be a horror movie, but whatever.
I was delighted to see these character's dynamics, I was delighted to see the actors do a wonderful job with their roles, I was delighted to see the story organically unfold the spooks that the movie embarked down.
The story does a wonderful job alluding to the theme of its time, and nobody feels "stupid" as they do in other horror films (though you, as the audience, still get to know better). I especially loved the dialogue, and how each moment segued to the next without any sort of jarring-ness. It does get a little slow 3/4s through the movie (as most horrors do) when things are getting pieced together, but aside from that, golden.
The biggest, disappointing fault with this movie is how it was filmed, along with its direction.
The direction pulls too many moments that adhere to "safe" scary storytelling instead of something that would've been way better. For example: a character sees a creature coming toward them at the end of the hall: KEEP THE CAMERA IN THE CHARACTER'S POV, do NOT show an extreme close-up of the creature, closer than the character is capable of, giving away the entire design of the creature and its mystery. SO MANY CLOSE-UPS of creatures that the character, in that moment, was not privy to. Had the camera kept the creature out of focus, slowly-meandering toward the main character, we'd have had a good spook on our hands, but instead we're left with a dry, "safe," homogenized spook experience.
The photography was equally disappointingly "safe" in that it was too bright throughout the entire movie. A corn field at night, a haunted house at night, a dark archive room of a hospital-- all were lit in the movie with big blue background lights like we were back in 90's filmmaking. Had they shot this like Signs or The Conjuring, we'd have been in spook-central.
One other slight disappointment-- but I think this just comes with the territory-- was the CG. I wish they'd have just gotten a flexible acrobat for one of the monsters, I wish they'd have gotten a practical effects artist to make a writhing leg ooze from a sore, I wish for many more practical effects to keep me immersed in stead of kick me out of the moment.
BUT this was a PG-13 movie based on a short story book aimed at kids, so I feel all of these criticisms should maybe back-off a little, and is why I'm giving this a little higher rating than I would something more aimed at adults. It was still delightful, and I still enjoyed the movie, and I would absolutely use this movie to indoctrinate kids into horror, as it did a wonderful job of it.
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