Malicious

"You know it's bad when we both laugh"- my boyfriend part way through. I usually scare easily but this movie didn't scare me and I laughed at a few things. It's literally all been done before. I was not scared of the made-in-China dollar store jewelry box. I missed the very end as I fell asleep. I won't be re-watching.

Okay, so this isn't perfect by any means but I managed to watch it to the end and I even managed to bring myself to give it a 6/10 rating. A pregnant couple move into a faculty house when the husband gets a job in the area as a math teacher. When they get there they find a gift has already arrived for them; a fertility box which can't be opened - until the wife opens it... Anyway, at the husband's new school he meets the head of the department, an enigmatic, blind guy who has other, more paranormal interests outside of academia. The drawbacks of this film to me were that it was predictable (which is okay if it's filmed and directed well - and this wasn't too bad) and the other thing is the husband...he's a bit 2 dimensional and doesn't display enough emotion or good, realistic reactions to the events that transpire (not the actor's fault. It's the fault of the director). The pros of this film are that, although it's a painted by numbers horror, the characters and acting are good and the there were enough interesting and quite well-done moments of horror throughout to sustain my interest which has become extremely fussy these days (being 50 years old). Overall: Not bad! A bit flat in places but a half decent offering. It's more of a 5 but I gave it 6 because I got to end without feeling too much frustration.

The movie had good cinematography and good acting. I don't remember having seen quite a similar story in any of the horror movies I have seen so far and I have seen many, so I would say some aspects of the story were original. Many ideas had been taken from movies such as Mirrors, the Unborn and other run-of-the-mill horror movies, so those scenes only served as a filler and didn't scare me at all. It did give me chills four or five times, so it wasn't a complete waste of time, but it didn't develop the scare factor as much as it could have, which is a real let down. The movie had potential to be really scary and leave you with lasting fear, but it was ultimately a failure.

What really annoyed me were the lead actor and actress. While they delivered good performances, they didn't have the looks. When I looked at their facial expressions, I couldn't help but yawn, and this is bad for a horror movie that demands your full attention. I think what actors and actresses look like is important and they can make you love or hate a movie and not be really able to explain why you feel that way. The characters were also not as developed as they could have been. We could have been told a lot more about the wife's sister, the evil entity and what it really wanted, its motives, the mysterious woman and her warning, the origins of the entity and the box, the reason for what the husband did at the end of the movie, etc. All in all, the movie left a lot to be desired. What you're going to get out of watching this movie are a few chills and wishing it had been directed by Sam Raimi. Now, he could have made this into a real horror movie.

I gave this a 7 but it was bordering on an 8 as I liked the plot, visual scares and overall content.

It's a classic person becoming possessed type of film and this had some good content where that was concerned. It had a small cast and mostly set in one house lots of Doll faces in some of the scenes and that in itself is creepy.

The overall story was good and the ending not your normal kind where everything gets put right but as for the scares? Well lots of screams and not too much gore. The screen writers choosing to allow the story to entertain us rather than pools of blood and body parts.

Great horror/thriller flick, entertaining and not too drawn out

I liked the story. Even though I think the characters ultimately unraveled at the end and behaved in a way that is inconsistent with the setup, the villain was original and the story was new.

This movie borrows from the Dybuk Box legend and mixes in some Rumplestiltskin mumbo jumbo, but I think the story works. I also think that the setting really adds to the isolation and the story, so that was a good story and direction choice.

The acting and character writing is where I struggled with this movie. I didn't buy the development of the character of either the wife or the husband. The occultist friend was pulled right from every other horror movie. If these characters had been likeable or believable, I think this story would have been really good. They weren't, though.