Restoration

Watching The Haunted is like opening an antique music box: it creaks, but it still plays a haunting tune. This paranormal potboiler has its skeletons sorted-refreshingly realistic characters and a plot that manages to hold its ectoplasmic weight. However, the one thing I couldn't find was a character to care about. It's a bit like watching Poltergeist but forgetting who actually owns the house. You're intrigued, but you don't feel the urge to grab their hand and scream, "Run to the light!"

The director wields atmosphere like a steady-handed exorcist, knowing when to linger and when to slice. But the pacing? Well, let's just say it crawls slower than a ghost with bad knees. Sepia-tinged flashbacks add a vintage horror charm-until they jarringly burst into full colour, like The Wizard of Oz gone wrong.

Credit where it's due: the cast does solid work. The creepy neighbours, practically auditioning for Twin Peaks: The Paranormal Edition. Their offbeat performances nearly outshine the spectres, adding just the right amount of "What are these people hiding?"

Ultimately, it's a perfectly spooky rainy-night watch. The Haunted doesn't reinvent the haunted house, but it does redecorate with flair. Fans of occult flicks will appreciate the vibes, even if they check their watches between scares.

Do yourselves a favour and give this a miss! The acting between the main couple is ludicrous. Even though she is a Doctor working long hours and under stress and he is apparently renovating their house, they are just too lovey dovey all of the time, especially the husband. The fun teddy bear fight like a couple of teenagers is laughable - even though the previous owner left over 400 teddy bears behind, they happen to throw the one teddy bear that contained the 'secret' diary - that was lucky wasn't it? When she finds out she's pregnant, the husband goes for a slash in the bathroom and finds the pregnancy kit - he comes out and throws a wobbly because she hadn't told him - she only found out herself 2 minutes ago! After reading the diary and doing some investigative work, they have to go to a loony bin to speak to some loony woman, who after all these years is still alive and luckily living in the local loony bin - another lucky stroke of luck. The Doctor woman tells some cock & bull story to get access to see her and is told to bring her credentials and paperwork with her. When she gets there, with her husband in tow, she is asked for her credentials before she can get in. After seeing her credentials, they are given 2 guest passes - one for her and one for Bob the friggin builder - how and why did they let him in? When they get inside to see this loony woman, the big beefy security guy says 'I'll be outside the door'. The loony woman is saying nothing, so Bob the builder decides to berate her and tells her what he thinks of her - quite loudly. Does the beefy bouncer hear this and coming running in to see what's going on - not a chance, he actually waits until she starts to cry and then he's in like a shot! I only gave it 2 stars because of creepy neighbour Zack.

Except the fact that it had nothing original whatsoever, it managed to act exactly like those before it, a plot that revealed itself far too soon and acting that could have been better.

As this movie progresses, it sure makes a lot of mistakes, and absolutely all of them have been seen before. Many times even. So this is a B horror that copies some A ones and a lot of other such B productions, for the sake of what? I doubt it will gross it's budget back. It brings nothing new to the table.

But sure, people want to make movies, they have to start somewhere, although it seems they are walking in other people's shoes and hope for the same destination. Hard to imagine this will work.

Cheers!

This is a pretty lame and unscary B-horror, with a non involving story and uninteresting characters. It's full of clichés (ghost of a killed little girl hovers around an old house), and the makers never succeed in evoking the apparently wanted sinister atmosphere. They tried to bring in a plot-twist in the last part, but when you introduce within 15 minutes a neighboring couple that behaves extremely strange, you already know where that is leading to, so this twist fell totally flat. The story got more and more farfetched towards the end and the special effects are meagre. I guess the acting was okay, but that's about it. Disappointing.

I must say that I usually tend to be a bit hesitant about a movie where the guy who wrote the script also directs and stars in the movie himself or herself, which turned out to be the case with "Restoration" at the hands of Zack Ward.

Reading the synopsis for the movie, however, did win me over enough to make me actually pick up the movie and give it a go. And having a nice looking DVD cover also was a selling point for the movie.

One thing that I did like about "Restoration" was the cast, because it was all unfamiliar actors and actresses to me, aside from Zack Ward. And I do enjoy watching talents that I haven't seen before, as they are not Associated with previously portrayed characters and roles.

"Restoration" is an unfathomably slow paced movie, and 21 minutes into the movie I was more than tempted to give up and find something else to watch, because there had been very little happening, and the characters were just so mundane and faceless that I didn't care one bit about them, nor could I differentiate between them. They could essentially have been played by one and the same actor or actress.

There seem to be very little meat on the body in terms of storyline and plot here, and after 40 minutes of enduring nothing happening, I still was waiting for a coherent and clearly painted out storyline.

You actually find yourself frequently checking the time to see how much time has progressed, and I must admit that I gave up on the movie just shortly after 40 minutes of pure boredom. This movie was so slow paced that it was almost torture to sit through.

I have no plans or intention of returning to "Restoration" to finish watching it, because there was nothing, and I do mean that literally, nothing to keep me entertained or wanting to see what would befall the generic characters in the movie.