Michael Stapleton

If you’re a horror fan, and hardened by visual violence and gore appearing in unexpected places in cinematic everyday life, you’ll enjoy the film. The unhappy banality of the movie family’s lives, created in part by the recently-departed grandmother-matriarch, will interest and resonate with a different movie demographic. This film is expertly directed and shot—I only wish that the script matched the talent level of the cast and the technical prowess of the makers—and can be enjoyed by anyone, regardless of the movie experience and literacy of a given viewer. Collette (especially), Wolff, Byrne, Dowd, and Shapiro are a splendid cast, and chew no scenery. Some will demur at the juncture when the possible yields to the very unlikely and schlocky (you’ll see it, believe me), and the gaping holes in the plot will become more apparent after having digested the spectacle. Again, this is a script problem and a deficiency in the experience of its author, or will seem so to some watchers. Others will not notice, or will not care about problems such as the credibility of the idea that the grandmother could be who she was without anyone noticing; the method by which Dowd attaches herself innocuously to the family; and the eventual destiny of Peter (Wolff), with the preposterousness of the last scene factored in. Then again, movies are full of incongruities, aren’t they? Cinephiles will see the remarkable similarity between Shapiro and the dwarf in Roeg’s _Don’t Look Now_. The screenwriter has also seen and ingested _The Exorcist_ and _Rosemary’s Baby_.