Stormhouse

OK, so first of all the idea for this movie is great. I think the writer did a great job to come up with something original and yet very much within a horror movie genre. It had all the right horror clichés and yet had some bits we had never seen before. Is it a great movie? Not by a long shot, it feels cheap in places and some effects are bad quality. However there are moments when the obvious lack of resource adds to the fact it feels quite real. I thought the American actors who play Hayley and Mr Faber were the best in the movie, along with the British guy who played the major, by a yard stick! The rest were not interesting enough, I do not know if that's down to the writing, or the actor but I guess ultimately I want to blame the Director here. There is also one British guy who appears to be dubbed throughout the movie, an older character but because of this, it really jerks you out of the film. Fortunately he is not in the picture long enough. I read one of the user reviews saying it was too dark, I didn't agree. I thought the fact that the movie was dark was a real plus. I found it quite scary throughout but I do agree the sounds quality is just plain bad! I thought the moment when all the soldiers are singing the nursery rhyme and clapping was a little laughable but there were some genuine scares in here. Quite a few to be honest. And some nice twists in there too! Is it going to be the kinda movie that sets the world alight, I very much doubt it, it just doesn't have the full package. The quality is just not there. It was a refreshing piece though and worth a look for sure. I like scary and this movie had scary.

I cannot find any better word to describe this movie. For a low budget movie, they have done a great job. I am afraid I cannot agree with the negative reviews. To me the dark environment, the harmony between the audio and light effects was almost perfect. Unique story along with the great play makes it more interesting. I have watched this movie several times and I will keep on watching it at times when I really need a chilling movie to indulge in to. I am very sorry that this movie and all its crew have not been well appreciated as they truly deserve much better recognition. I just have one question and I still cannot figure that out is the connection between this event and the invasion of Iraq. As far as I could think, such event could happen at any time in the history. What was so specific about this movie and its link to the invasion? I could not see the connection or I might have missed something. Other than that, it was greatly done.

Sadly, the comments I read before watching the movie got me pretty excited, I wasn't expecting a masterpiece but certainly not this, not this at all. A complete waste of time, from minute 1 till its very end.

The most annoying thing during "Stormhouse", is the light! There isn't any! It's all pretty much pitch black, you can hardly ever see anything! Of course the acting is as bad as it gets, the dialogue as horrible as possible, even the sound was extremely bad! Why? Because it fluctuated in a very disturbing way, either the actors were whispering and you couldn't hear one word they were saying or out of the blue you got hit by this amazingly loud "music", put there to mark a very "important and suspenseful" moment! And there were none, so the "music" was clearly set only to annoy the audience. It looks like one of them really old movies, where everything happens in the dark, and you have to use you imagination, as wildly as possible, to make sense of anything whatsoever.

If you don't take my advice and you decide to give it a try, because 4 other people gave positive feedback, after you see it, I double dare you to find something worse out there! And believe me, this is going to be one heck of a challenge!

This is without a doubt one of the worst horror movies that I have had to suffer through, so I guess the label 'horror' was accurate in that sense, but in the sense of it being a scary movie, not so much.

"Stormhouse" starts off with indicating "This film was inspired by real events". Yeah, then that makes me Elvis Presley incarnated. So they want us to believe that the British military had managed to capture a spirit entity from the afterlife? And to make matters even worse, keep it secured in a small fenced yard? Right! Lets see, spirit entities are incorporeal and ethereal, meaning they would be able to traverse in any direction and even through solid matter. But still, the director wanted us to believe that a chain-linked fence (without a roof) was sufficient to hold such a supernatural entity at bay?

Moving on. And for a military base, it is without a doubt the most unlit installation in the history of military bases. I have never seen such lack of lighting anywhere. And I found it highly unrealistic and questionable that a military force would keep their base shrouded in perpetual darkness. And it just didn't help the movie one bit either, as most of the time we can hardly see what is going on because of the poor (well, lack of) lighting in almost every scene.

As for being a 'horror' movie, then "Stormhouse" was really a major disappointment, as there were no scares in it at all - probably because we couldn't see what was going on as there wasn't sufficient lighting anywhere. And also, the entire story was just so very implausible that it didn't work out on any level.

I am a big fan of horror movies, and I do like supernatural movies, but this one was just too much waste of time and effort. There are far better ghost movies available on the market. Actually, you might even be better off (and more entertained) by movies such as those awful "Paranormal Activity" movies. But still, they were better than this one.

One thing that "Stormhouse" had working for it, though, was the people they had cast for the various roles. Most of them actually did good enough jobs in acting, but nothing really memorable here though.

It wasn't very far into the movie before I started to do other stuff while the movie was playing; SMS texting and cleaning up the living room. The story in "Stormhouse" is just unfathomable uninteresting and unappealing. If you like horror movies or ghost movies, "Stormhouse" might not be a good choice. I was bored senseless.

I'm going to try and keep this simple. I saw Stormhouse at Frightfest festival last August and it was my favourite film out of all I viewed (though I would highly recommend 'The Woman'.) Considering the budget was so low, the special effects were excellent and it made me jump a few times - I am a massive horror fan and hardly ever have to cover my eyes when I watch a film but there was a certain scene which I won't describe (don't want to spoil anything) that I still can't get out of my head. It's a fairly gruesome affair, which in my books is great (the more blood the better) What first attracted me to the film was the connection with the invasion of Iraq, I am fascinated with any films to do with war (my favourite being The Deerhunter) but with Stormhouse I got soldiers and a supernatural entity. WIN.

The acting is high quality (especially loved Grant Masters' character)I don't want to reveal anything but you may be surprised by the ending which, in my opinion is a good thing. Who wants a film to be predictable? It is a truly good British film and I actually walked out of a couple of big budget horror films during the festival as they were mediocre and not scary at all.

Plus, the writer of the film actually came in front of the audience before the film started and explained how the ideas came about and introduced it, which I thought was great and made you appreciate the viewing even more.

I haven't kept this simple at all have I? Oh well. Sorry! Watch Stormhouse, seriously, British horror films do not get enough publicity and this one in particular is one that should be watched. I probably wouldn't watch it alone though!