The 95th review!
Got home from doing 13 Minutes of Nonstop News last night and wanted to watch something while it was dark, you know, get the right ambiance. I haven't had a chance to go to Family Video or hit anyone up for borrowed movies, so to the Netflix well I went. The first movie I settled on was called The Hole, but after five minutes of TERRIBLE dialogue and worse acting, I shut it off. Let me tell you I am glad I did, because I eventually found...
Haunter 2013
The movie stars Abigail Breslin of Little Miss Sunshine and Zombieland fame, in a twist in the whole, ghost haunting theme. She knows she's dead, she knows her family is dead, but the rest of them don't. So she's stuck in a type of Groundhog Day loop where everything runs the exact same. It keeps happening until she gets contacted by the other side, and the next morning everything's different. Her parents get into a huge fight and a strange man knocks at the door. When he gets alone with Breslin he threatens her, telling her to ignore any weird noises or voices calling her, any contacting the other side will bring major consequences to her and her family.
I don't want to give away too much, but after she figures out who that man is she tries to "wake up" (make them realize they're dead) the rest of the people killed in that house to save the girl contacting her from the same fate. I was pretty blown away by it. It's more of a thriller, but there are some really scary parts and the whole movie is genuinely spooky. The antagonist, whose billed as "The Pale Man" in the credits is really good. His voice is slow, deliberate, and scary. Some of the threats and hearing his voice come from other characters sent a chill down my spine. "History doesn't repeat itself, it rhymes."
It gets pretty intense in the later half as the Pale Man plays a cat and mouse game with Breslin as she tries to save the living family. He's so calm and collected, and his voice definitely makes him a frightening character. One review said the movie gets more out of its premise than it should, and I agree. I think a good part of that is because of Abigail Breslin. The Pale Man is good, but he's not in it that much, and the other characters are there to feed off Breslin, and she carries the movie pretty damn well, I liked it a lot. And after checking Rotten Tomatoes, I liked it more than most.
No it wasn't the scariest, but it had more than enough scares in it, Abigail Breslin is really good, and it's a really interesting premise, that is pulled off better than I expected. Think of it as The Others, but better.