Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

df4205 Little town full of little people...waking up to say...... Oh Lifetime...here we go. So small family moves to rural English countryside, even though we're supposed to think the family is American their accents occasionally slip through on certain vowels and consonants (Car-In, instead of Karen for example). The parents seem to do....something for a living...possibly science-y or educational it's a little unclear (but dad sure wants a blackboard, so he can do long equations and such). Of course the eldest daughter (being a teenager and all....oh those wacky moody teenagers...am I right?) is unhappy at....everything. They meat with a realtor to rent their summer home (I've never yet met anyone who doesn't want a year's lease signed) who seems a bit squirrelly with not wanting to volunteer certain information about THE HAUNTED HOUSE....next to THE HAUNTED WOODS!!! (Stop it, you're scaring me....Stop scaring your sister!). They go to the 700 year old house (that doesn't seem more than 100 tops...that's some good work it's had done). They meet the crazy cat lady from the Simpsons...wait it's just Angelica Houston...who tells them they aren't welcome, but the realtor tells her she has no choice.....um why is that again? Did she fall behind on her taxes? The younger sister takes a moment to....exist...really that's about all she does. (Stop it, you're scaring me). Mystery and "suspense" occur. Girl meets local town boy (good lordy he's built....jailbait jailbait!! Lol) who claims she is "unlike any other girl he's met"....well yeah, that's because she seems to be literally the only girl in town. They try to unravel the mystery of the house/crazy cat lady/woods/the black plague (stop it, you're scaring me) using ye old timey technology (green is not a good color to be reading text against, you're really gonna strain the hell out of your eyes like that). Some stuff happens at the house a mirror cracked "from side to side" (they were so tempted to quote Tennyson you could cut it with a knife) which the older gets blamed for (apparently she can destroy objects with her mind) and gets yelled at for scaring her sister (stop it, you're scaring me). The parents seem just about ready to blame every action of the universe on their daughter's willpower. The youngest one starts speaking in tongues (stop it, you're scaring me) well the oldest one must have caused it....so she can bend objects to her will, force people to speak in tongues (or backwards if you prefer), break your compact in your hand from across the room....and this is the person you decide to yell at.....better play nice she's about one step away from killing everyone at the prom! But the mystery abounds. Turns out years back there was a doctor, a plague, and a midget and they all walked into a bar.....sorry. The doctor was killed, and now his ghost haunts the woods, and apparently he made a tree eat a little girl because she was wearing his clothes and singing a nursery rhyme (good thing it wasn't Little Miss Muppet, he might of conjured up Shelob mother of all spiders) and I can't say it was all that smart to be putting on clothes that were worn by a man that had the plague (ick). Crazy cat lady tries to make a deal with the ghost to trade the younger sister for her long lost daughter...and immediately regrets it, so instead packs up her stuff and decides to move to an old folks home. But oldest girl has figured out a plan, re-enact the forest scene to make the ghost take her too. The tree eats her (her family conveniently miss this little demonstration of the supernatural) and finds the lost girl who hasn't aged a day (good luck catching up on 30 years of technology...then again your town hasn't managed that feat either apparently) she tries to save her but to no avail. Beefcake boyfriend figures out what the hell a "peeling" is and goes to ring the church bells at midnight (man that is some bright as hell midnight....I don't think midnight is that bright at the arctic circle...did the moon go supernova?! So once again the day is saved....thanks to...a thesaurus. They all walk away....problem solved.....except that mom sold all their stuff, and they have to rent their house out to strangers....and explaining to the local government why you daughter who should be somewhere in her 40's is still a teenager...and......screw it lol. All in all, a little sub-par as all things go. I didn't really care about any of the characters, the parents were vacuous (did he ever get his blackboard? The world will never know) the younger sister was...I'm fairly certain she was an escaped animatronics robot from Disney...she was there...that was about it. The beefcake boyfriend....eh, the actor seemed to try, just didn't have a lot to work with. The main antagonist....she just never sold anything to me, her emotions/reactions were all one dimensional cardboard. Angelica Houston was a delight...but that's a given. So it fits in so well with so many other Lifetime movies, not great.....not terrible...occasionally boring...but a passable way to vegetate in front of the tv screen.

the_doofy It is very very difficult to find a horror movie that is rated PG and creeps out the entire audience, but this is what U get with this film.Its a low budget deal with C acting in some characters and B+ in others. The music is done very well. Camera work was quite good. Suspense was there. The story line and plot is done well enough that my wife and I were kept engrossed. I can predict typical horror fans will down grade this gem for lack of blood, body counts, smoking/pot, macabre humor, and so on. Its a real tribute to all involved with this movie that it does not have many of the basic elements a modern horror movie of today generally has. I'm sure many viewers will decide that such a movie cannot even be classified as horror. And yet an honest viewer is forced to check the box marked 'spooky'.Ending is both predictable and original.

mshavzin Its a bit of mystery, a bit of horror, and a bit of romance. its aimed for the youngsters, but the story, acting, and writing are top notch. Of course if you were hoping for actual horror, then move along. No body parts here. If you're looking for family fun, enjoy. One nice thing is that it really just entertains the kids, without piling on the political correctness, or some preachy message that ruins the fun. I recommend this. I will say again, viewers like Mr Ectoplasma who watch mostly only horro films, and like the trappings of horror will not be happy. This is an adventure story at heart, not a horror tale. In horror you feel the hoplesness as the hero/heroine is completely unable to do anything to save herself or others. This has a very different tone. Jan is smart, capable, and the scenery is there to show you the beauty of the English countryside, not to make you frightened or unsettled. Its only scary sometimes. I LIKED this approach and so will many others. But horror film lovers will be disappointed. One more time, I do NOT like horror. I have always found it kind of stupid. People who think like I do will enjoy this story. People who like by the book horror will NOT.

Mr_Ectoplasma This retelling of "The Watcher in the Woods" follows an American family who are spending the summer in Wales. They rent a manor from a mysterious elderly woman whose daughter disappeared in the woods decades before, and the daughters find themselves enveloped in the mystery.I'll be direct here: I grew up on the 1980 version of this film and adore it, and also read the book as a child. It seems screenwriter Scott Abbott was attempting to stick closer to the source novel for this version, as the 1980 film did have substantial differences, but the result is not for the better. The pacing here is fine albeit routine, and the unraveling of the mystery offers few surprises and virtually no tensity. The film has all the cliché trappings of a made-for-television film, but doesn't even attempt a unique spin on them. I won't pretend that the source novel or even the 1980 John Hough-directed film are masterpieces; they are, at the end of the day, youth-aimed works and are going to be lite fare. That said, this retelling is not only narratively bland, but visually bland(er). The original film was a remarkably dark, Gothic film, and part of what made it such a staple of so many's childhood nightmares was the off-kilter atmosphere, menacing score, and unsettling visuals. Here, key scenes are dumbed down, and the look of the film as a whole is utterly devoid of mood; the home used in this version and the surrounding forest lack any and all menace or mystery, and the photography is a large part of what makes the film so insipid. Exterior scenes in particular are bright and cheery, and not even in an ironic way that belies the horror.The performances are concomitantly weak, with the lead cast mainly consisting of Brits doing bad impressions of American accents. Anjelica Huston is fine given what she has to work with, but even her performance here is bland, and the intrigue surrounding her character rendered meaningless. Benedict Taylor, who played the boyfriend in the original, makes an appearance in a way that brings things generationally full-circle; this is a nice nod, but it cannot come close to salvaging the rest.In the end, "The Watcher in the Woods" pales in comparison to its source material as well as the 1980 film, mainly because, unlike the novel and the previous adaptation, it offers nothing in the way of mood, atmosphere, or tension. It's too bland, too bright, and far too non-threatening to offer anything worthwhile. The original novel and earlier film are both unique and ominous in their own respective ways; unfortunately, the same cannot be said here. Aside from a semi-well-directed flashback scene, the film is unrepentantly dull. 2/10.