Inhabited

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.

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.

To be honest, I was hoping for this movie to have a lot more bite than it actually had. Watching it, more often than not I thought I was watching something that was made for television. There's no real gore, no swearing, not even any shocks. Even the way the movie has been photographed reminded me of a made-for-television production. But the biggest problem that the movie has isn't really its low-tech feel, but that for almost all of the movie, NOTHING terrifying or creepy happens. The movie feels like it is spinning its wheels over and over by not delivering anything for its horror-wanting audience. Movie is not a complete loss - towards the end of the movie, we are given several special effect sequences that look very impressive for a movie that had a low budget. Had there been more of these special effects throughout, it's possible the movie might have been livened enough to recommend. But as it is, there's not enough to recommend this movie even for a casual viewing experience.

Malcolm McDowell diagnoses Megan Gallagher's daughter and she as having a form of illness, when they believe they are seeing "The Huldre", troll-like creatures which live with "the rocks and the roots" (to quote the movie).

Basically a family moves into an older house, which has a smaller doll-house in the backyard. The daughter (well played by Sofia Vassiliova) starts to befriend the creatures, until they become vindictive. The family cat also disappears.

There are a few good scenes with Megan Gallagher ("Millennium") and Malcolm McDowell as the psychiatrist. There is also something strange which occurred to one of McDowell's patients.

If you enjoy this type of story, you may also like "Bad Ronald", which had a similar odd theme, and the house is haunted by bad Ronald (Scott Jacoby) only that movie is from the 70's. 7/10.

This little flick is reminiscent of several other movies, but manages to keep its own style & mood. "Troll" & "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" come to mind. The suspense builders were good, & just cross the line from G to PG. I especially liked the non-cliche choices with the parents; in other movies, I could predict the dialog verbatim, but the writing in this movie made better selections. If you want a movie that's not gross but gives you some chills, this is a great choice.