Inhabited

I bought this film from e-bay as part of a lot of about twenty horror flicks, all about a dollar a piece. When watching this, my first impression was that it probably was from the late 80s. Later on I began thinking - the Linkin Park posters on the wall and everything else seemed to hint that I was dealing with a more recent film. Realizing that, the flick became an unbearable torment. The last 3 minutes were the longest in the movie history - the film just refused to end. Is there a genre such as "horror for children"? In that case this film is definitely it. If there are parents, perverse enough to want to introduce their offspring to horror, I suggest this would be perfect for kids of about 6-8. The only thing I really liked was Greg Cipes who was much too good an actor for that kind of nostalgic retro bottom part of a drive-in double-bill.

I work in a video store - so generally I take home everything as it is free. Well this little anti-gem came in today and I thought it looked decent. Goblin like dwellers living in a house and looking all scary like, the premise seemed like it could have been creepy. But it was handled in every wrong way possible.

They focused more on dialog between characters we do not care about. It follows every cliche in the book(two cat jump out scenes in the first 15 minutes) and even then it does horribly. Traditionally, if you are going to use the old "sneak up behind someone" routine and cue the scary jump music, you do so in a way where the person sneaks up behind them. In this, they cue the scary music, and the woman jumps, but the guy doing the sneaking is slowly walking into the scene, it was downright hilarious.

And they do the thing that really bugs me a lot..the characters act as if they know it is a horror movie. In the very beginning, the mother stumbles across a doll with her head off, so after finding out the son didn't do it, she starts panicking like something horridly is the matter. Doesn't make much sense. And the fairies themselves just aren't done creepily at all. Just a bunch of evil dead style camera running, quick flashes of their faces, and a lot of skipped frames. The whole movie has a definite made for tv feel, although not nearly as scary as a made for tv movie. Rather than trying to make the movie creepy, they went the route of the film being nothing but a slow unravel as to what the things are and people involved in the past..but we don't care.

Thanks to silly horror movies like "Troll" and the indescribably atrocious cult-favorite "Troll 2", it has become practically impossible to take movies with kobolds, gnomes and various other types of little green hobgoblins seriously these days. Only just recently I watched the 70's made-for-TV movie "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark", which is basically a quite terrifying and serious-toned film about domestic little goblin monsters, and yet I still couldn't help thinking back about the laugh-inducing potato headed critters dressed in garbage bags that were running amok in "Troll 2". Same thing happened to me now. As much as I tried going into "Inhabited" with a clear mindset, unconsciously I kept comparing the supposedly creepy and menacing garden fairies with the badly sculptured goblins of Nilbog! Still, even without all the prejudices, "Inhabited" is a remotely entertaining albeit unmemorable straight-to-video horror flick. It's a cheesy, soft and politically correct pastiche of family drama and Northern Europe mythology. The annoying and murderous little creatures in this movie aren't your plain average goblins; they are "The Huldre": wicked little Norwegian demons that live underground and attempt to chase happy families out of their houses through influencing the youngest children. This overcomes the Russell family as they move into their ramshackle dream house in a remote little town. The cherubic blond daughter of MILF-actress Megan Gallagher starts to behave strangely whenever she hangs out in the cute play house in the back of the garden. She claims her friends are fairies, and even though the sinister handyman also warns for strange occurrences in the past, Gina's parents simply think the girl has troubles adjusting to her new neighborhood. When she keeps rattling about fairies, they arrange an appointment with the acclaimed psychologist Dr. Werner whilst "The Huldre" are slowly coming out of their botanical shelter. Not much special to mention here. The pace is acceptable and the attempts to build up suspense are pretty cute. You understand this is a family-friendly horror movie, so no bloody murder sequences are graphically being shown here. Heck, even the cadaver of the family's pet cat is kept off-screen. This is the umpteenth nonsensical horror movie in which Malcolm McDowell pops up and he practically always depicts an unreliable, greedy and self-centered authority figure.

This is a good example of a tv movie. The only qualms i have

would be the IDIOT son/brother and the fact that the synopsis calls

the 'faries' 'trolls' and this kind of confused me. But, overall it is a substantial example of the genre it represents... I would recommend it to anyone who wants to freak their kids out

JUST before bedtime.... kidding... kidding! a joke!

A family of four moves into an old house with an even older 'doll house' in the backyard inhabited by the Huldre -- little troll-like people with an attitude. Fans of gore should look elsewhere, but those people with time enough to watch a relatively 'family-friendly' horror movie will not be disappointed. Other reviewers have called this a made-for-cable movie. If it is, I'm curious which channel produced it. It definitely has the feel of something that might have been produced for USA or TBS. It's not really scary, but it has a very professional veneer and solid performances. This film, however, falls apart at the end the same way so many other horror movies do by showing too much of the monsters. The Huldre seem fierce and mysterious when seen in short glimpses, but, when they are overexposed, you start to think you could take care of them all with a baseball bat.