Dylan Frey

I wanted to enjoy this movie when it ended, and that's part of the reason I'm actually writing this review, because I normally never do this. To be fair, it actually IS decent up until a point. Kevin Bacon really sells his character, and Amanda Seyfried does a good job as well. I expected not to believe the whole giant-age-gap-relationship-to-a-young-movie-star thing, but they pulled it off admirably, and the little girl was also enjoyably cast and believable. The characters carry the movie, and although the pacing is slow at first, it works, and when they get to this bizarre looking air b-n-b in the Welsh countryside, things start to go predictably off the rails, albeit in subtle, interesting ways. Time loss for Kevin Bacon's character, rooms that appear and disappear at will, corridors that lengthen or don't lead to where they're supposed to, rooms that are bigger on the inside of the house than they are on the outside, etc. 3/4's of the way through the movie, I remember thinking I was totally sold, and loved the way it was unfolding. Then the ending happened. Unfortunately, even the movie's style sort of unravels and becomes chaotic and tossed together as the final act progresses. There's a lot of Kevin Bacon running frantically through the random doors and corridors with shaky camera angles and sinister figures that don't really capitalize on the tension so expertly built early on. It might still have recovered from this with a solid twist ending, or at least a satisfying one, but instead it lazily floats out a concept that I had already guessed as something that was supposed to be a surprise, and then proceeds to ruin the previously enjoyable 90% with a conclusion that's neither emotionally satisfying nor entertaining. I like really dark horror movies, ones that are FAR grittier than this tame little ghost story, even ones that end with utter tragedy or the deaths of all the characters, but thematically, this one sort of demanded a lighter ending, in order to subvert expectations and reunite the characters. Instead, it merely soured the enjoyment I'd taken from watching the rest. If you really strain your own credulity, you can twist the time-travel elements to get more out of it, or take the whole thing as an allegory for guilt and self-hatred (or both), but neither thing really resolves the disappointment I felt after finishing this film. Three stars for a great start, but it could have been a WAY better movie if it had stuck the landing.