The haunting tactics ended up all being things that related to the wife that had passed. That was a really neat twist.
In the flashbacks the wife complained about the rattling door that they jiggered with, the wife dancing to the music that was playing out of the stereo system. And I forgot the other instance but still now it makes sense why the hauntings pushed him over the edge
Tbh the twist would've been far better if we didn't have any flashbacks until one long one at the end, shows the door, music, bell etc, so that we would've been like "huh!? Why is he battering the door" etc etc... Then seeing the flashbacks at the end would've been a far better twist so we're all like "oooh".
They missed a trick there imo.
They missed a trick there imo.
Still would have been executed better than it was.
share"Then seeing the flashbacks at the end would've been a far better twist so we're all like "oooh".
I thought that would make it a little too much like The Sixth Sense.
No. doing a mass reveal at the end is always a cheap trick. I kind of like the way they leaked the real motivation and how the "hauntings" were specifically designed to drive him mad all along. It stopped this from being a cheap horror flick and turned it into a film about loss and unrelenting pain. Both the old man and the kid had suffered a loss which they couldn't come to terms with. I especially like how they only slowly revealed what a truly good person the old man was. It makes the ending that much sadder. The very thing for which the kid hated him was, in fact, an act of heroism which had saved not only the kid but his mother. The kid couldn't see it because he just missed his father.
It was sad, and way better than most of the nay-Sayers insist. I think because it involved "hauntings" (and implied that the kids were going to see something they didn't expect and most people thought it would be something supernatural), and because it utilized partial use of the found-footage technique, people thought it was supposed to be a horror film and felt cheated.
It's not horror. It's tragedy.
I think it was a good film.
Movies are IQ tests; the IMDB boards are how people broadcast their score.
I never thought it was a horror at all, more like disturbia, kinda...
I take it you didn't like The Usual Suspects?, Se7en?, The Game?, Memento?, Saw? or even Fight Club?... All of those films use the mass reveal... Some of the best films made use these so called cheap tricks.
Loved each of those films, but it was a different kind of reveal in each of them, with a path to the truth having already been laid out to be followed to the conclusion. This film just shifted gears and changed everything in the final reveal. It's one thing to misdirect your attention, like those excellent films did. It's another to hold out a trinket and then snatch it back and say "just kidding."
In any event, I didn't dislike this film. I just felt is was handled a little ham-fistedly, which is why a lot of people didn't care for it. They went in thinking they were getting one kind of film and at the very end were told they had actually just watched something else entirely.
Movies are IQ tests; the IMDB boards are how people broadcast their score.
I liked the film, but I agree with you.
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