Spoilers but the ghosts in story did not influence any of the events. All it did was increase the total runtime to 2 hours, with all the subplots about the séance, and the history of the house, and the ghost sightings. The movie would have been perfectly serviceable as a domestic thriller but the ghosts just seemed tacked on to get people to watch the movie.
shareThat is a good point. Without all that jazz and the story is pretty much the same...
share[deleted]
Perhaps someone could do a fan cut which removes the supernatural goings-on.
shareIf the ghosts hadn't been added it would have ended as your "average domestic thriller". In fact, I don't think "All Things Cease to Appear" by Elizabeth Brundage, the book that inspired the movie had these supernatural elements (although Brundage has had some strange and odd ghostly experiences herself).
The movies has some interesting details that add a bit of depth to the story (Swedenborg, George Inness, Thomas Cole) but it's not very well executed in the end. Particularly, Swedenborg is a very interesting subject if you want to go deeper into the "philosophical/theological" side of the movie.
It's not a bad cast and it's not a terrible movie, it's just that it ended being a little better that your "average domestic thriller" instead of a deeper, meaningful story if all those underground themes had been better used.
Yea, that's my concern. The movie picks up many interesting narrative threads (the bulemia, the Christian allegory, the real life philosopher, the historical oppression of women in the house etc) that end up going nowhere. So the plot threads, and the horror element by extension, end up feeling like a cheap gimmick.
shareThat's pretty much how I feel. When I think about it, it is a bit Shining-esque, except in the Shining the influence of the ghosts, and the evil of the place, had actual importance and weight to the story. This could've been a pretty decent domestic drama if they'd gone another route, or even an interesting character study.
As a metaphor, ghosts are as good as any, but I felt it did nothing for the story here. It was so badly integrated and developed that there might as well not have been any ghosts, and it would've made little difference to the events. It's gonna take a bit more than a couple of scenes of George hearing whispers to convince me that "the ghosts pushed him to it". Especially when there is an established pattern of deceit and an insinuation that he has already murdered someone.
Ghosts aside, the movie also has no tension and build up, so it was just boring and uninteresting.
I thought it was alright tbh. It had enough intrigue to keep it interesting.
But now that you mention it, i agree that it would have been better as a thriller and to have removed the ghost element.
6/10
The same plot has been done million times in other movies and doing the movie without the ghosts would change nothing.
shareI thought the supernatural element was going to have more of an affect but in the end to me it seemed like it was something of interest for the female lead character in the film.
Afterall, what did the female spirit even do other than be there to somehow support her, which in the end didn’t do anything to save her life!
It’s like women in that house have to die and continue a line of hauntings which actually serve no real purpose.