The Unleashed

I do like Dark House Films. This is a very impressive movie for the budget. The acting is excellent and character relationships believable and solid. The story is pretty good although does lose it's way towards the end. It's as if it was building one type of story but then veered off slightly.

I liked how the paranormal stuff wasn't just contained in the house, it was able to follow people and I also really liked the book store and the characters there, that was a great.

All in all not a bad movie at all.

A valiant attempt to do something different with this possession/occult genre flick. But it fails miserable mainly due to the terrible pacing in this film. It moved so slowly I felt like I had been watching a two and a half hour movie by the time it was done. The most interesting part of the movie is the beginning, with the scene set back during covered-wagon times. It set things up well..but the follow-through was just not there. Further,unresolved issue at film's end leave the audience wondering - not by intention of the director either, which would have been permissible. Nice try..but there is simply nothing new or original to offer here. Not worth buying, but if it finds its way to cable (doubtful) and you are up late with nothing to do - then I suppose you could see for yourself just how flat the movie really is.

(2011) The Unleashed HORROR

Straight-to-rental and low budget crap centering on young daughter, Madison (Trisha Echeverria) coming back from Europe to sell her mother's house. Her sister Lindsy (Jessica Salgueiro) wants to remain in the house for a few days, so that she can have enough time to find a house of her own. They then discover a "Ouji Board" and both her and their friends decide to use it, and of course the psychic phenomenon happen as well as a dark family history connection regarding the Ouji board and the house they grew up in. Executive produced and directed by Manuel H. Da Silva .

What an incredibly silly and formulaic genre flick!

I'm not exaggerating when I'm saying that I was mostly bored while watching this movie. It takes the longest time for something good or interesting to ever happen and the movie does a real poor job at handling its concept.

This is being one of those horror flicks that picks a more realistic approach to things. The one that focuses more on the drama and storytelling, as opposed to any gore or scares. And nothing wrong with such an approach but the problem with this movie is that the story is lacking the right required amount of depth to make and keep things interesting and the story itself is being pretty predictable from start to finish, especially for those who are really into the genre.

Surely they could had come up with some more original stuff. I mean, another horror movie involving an Ouija board and characters with a troubled past? Seriously, why even bother doing a movie when this is all you could come up with. The movie is a completely redundant one within its genre and there really is no good reason why you should ever watch this movie.

Even though the movie focuses on a lot of other things, it foremost is still being a horror of course. But really not an effective one, in any way or form. All it basically has in it are a bunch of false scares, which is not only a very clichéd thing for a genre movie to feature but it also gets repeated far too often in this movie to ever let it work out as anything effective.

Thing with the story was that it also never could interest me. Because of that I started to loose interest in the movie as a whole and after a short while I already had no idea what was going on in the movie any more, simply because I couldn't care about it. None of the events or characters in this movie could ever grab me and the ending really didn't changed much about this.

The only reason why I still give it a somewhat 'high' rating is because the movie never truly angered or annoyed me. It's not a totally horrible movie but it has far too little going for it and besides is being too formulaic- and handles its concept far from effective enough to consider this a good enough and watchable little genre flick.

4/10

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I was quite impressed by the production values of this film, having seen an earlier production (Cycle of Fear) from the same creator which was abysmal in writing, acting, and production. This time, the writing was mostly good (see below), the acting was fine, and the filmwork was to a high standard, including effects. The only noticeable limitation was exterior locations.

The scripting was very good, with lots of suspense throughout, although the story gets a bit weak in the final reel. I think this could have been wrapped up better, as the characters who show up at the end are a bit contradictory in their supposed motivations. There are also some unresolved questions about the protagonist's troubled relationship with her father - several possibilities are hinted at, without it ever being clear which was actually the case.

Nevertheless, the rest of the rest of the film makes it worth watching, so see if this comes to a screening near you.