Candlewood

I watched this so you don't have too. I usually love a campy scary movie. This was not it.

It started out intriguing. A blended city family moves to secluded home in woods. Each family member pushing boundaries with the other members of their family. Add legends about the area where they're now living to explain history of haunted land. So much potential to work with.

Then the movie loses the plot. Bad acting and weird special effects made for a long boring movie. It's like the director had a vision, but after 10 minutes got frustrated and quit trying. None of the characters had any redeeming qualities. The "story" had huge plot holes which I don't really care about, I was just glad it was over.

First of all Lovers Leap is actually above a river, a few miles from the lake.

I think the movie is an insult to the real New Milford. Many of their residents are NYC transplants.

My father came up from Brooklyn, building our house on Candlewood. Stories, legends are actually few. When a person claims a legend, it's generally confined to a story their grandpa made up during a summer barbecue and nobody else within 10,000 miles has heard of it.

So this movie was a stretch for me, but the moviemaker's effort to lay down the plot line, stoke curiosity, or build suspense is truly lacking.

There actually have been a fair amount of drownings by the dam in New Milford, and there are occasions the victims have not been found. I'd never get out of my boat up near the Rocky River pumping area. To be fair, many of the drownings are sadly Hispanic immigrants who are reading the signs and not not strong swimmers to begin with.

There was a man murdered in what we called Calm Cove in the late 1970s , so there is a little bit of true material.

I'm happy to see a Connecticut movie effort, but the only people giving this an 8, 9, or 10, are relatives of the actors or director in my opinion.

Almost all characters are unlikable. And the family dynamic was barely explained and makes no sense, detracting from any sense of plot. Liking the characters and wanting them to be safe is a hallmark or horror films - add in a bad guy or girl who we want to get their due is nice to, but don't kill kids in your movie.

I had high hopes for this movie. Unfortunately, I was extremely disappointed. I heard about the film years ago and was looking forward to it. Being from Connecticut, I had been to the lake many times. There are a lot of interesting stories about the lake. It is a 17 mile, man-made lake and there are a ton a creepy stories about it that we all used to tell each other as kids. All of them more interesting than the story in this movie. Very pedestrian directing effort and not a very entertaining script. All these high ratings must be from people involved with the movie or friends of the filmmakers. Not a good movie at all.

What a total waste of 90 minutes! I would have stopped watching after the first 15 minutes if I hadn't been on a flight and it was the only thing I had downloaded unfortunately!

What a total sh@t show!!! HORRIBLE HORRIBLE joke of a movie!!! Who the heck paid to have this thing made?? I mean from the videography to the incredibly horrendous acting!! I don't know which was worse! It looked like something a teenager would have made in middle school MAYBE! The middle schooler prob would have done a better job!

Take my advice and Do not waste one minute of your time on this atrocity!!!

This movie was terrible from start to finish. The acting was really bad and the dialogue was unrealistic. I say this because the step daughter and mother clearly hate eachother, but the kind of dialogue they have back and fourth would never fly in real life. And some of the actions/behaviours. The characters(specifically the parents) are excruciatingly unlikeable. As the movie goes on you don't grow to like them at all, in fact you hate them even more. The father's acting is perhaps the worst in the movie and he is just a complete jerk in every way. The wife is the most unlikeable as her character is an overall awful person. Her hateful/angry/jealous demeanour makes the movie intolerable. I've never seen a movie with characters just hating eachother and not grabbing the hearts of anyone.