Set up for parole, a man wanting easy money takes a job with a real estate firm to stay at a supposedly abandoned house for a week and cleanse the area of spirits supposed to live there, eventually bringing him into contact with a witch's ghost in the house that starts tormenting him.
This was a fairly solid and intriguing supernatural genre feature. One of the better elements of this one comes from the likable enough main story that offers up an intriguing way of getting its plot points in order. The idea of taking the job while in prison as a special way to earn parole and extra money by staying at a house that was said to be haunted and performing a series of rituals designed to cleanse it for other owners is a rather strong and original enough concept. Not only does this make for a reasonable enough excuse to bypass the expected notion of leaving once the hauntings start since he's forced by law and physical restraint to remain on the property, but the whole thing is logical enough to allow for a strong enough starting point. That carries over into the use of hauntings and supernatural encounters as a means of bringing about the intriguing expose of grief that the film utilizes. With the whole setup of moving back into the house allowing him to face the past with his strained relationship with his wife and child that came about shortly after his birth, everything starts to unravel quite quickly including the flashbacks to their life together which was shown to be contentious and had some harsh confrontations that fuel his grief. The encounters that are featured here involving the genuine spirit in the house laying waste not just to his fractured psyche but the interlopers that come around the property that manage to mix in some incredibly effective and brutal moments expanding on the storyline about him becoming corrupted by the figure in the house to relieve these moments to carry out her plans. These all make for a solid enough time here although there are some big issues with this one. The main drawback here is the overuse of the family trauma background to once again make use of personal grief and tragedy for its storyline. This whole setup is overused and trotted out yet again in a supernatural-tinged genre fare that focuses on the supernatural spirit being a metaphor for the grief he's experienced coming back to haunt him once again, and it's quite familiar to the point of being uninteresting with the inability to tell anything new or interesting with the material. The pacing with the generous flashbacks and interactions with the handyman is no help in trying to instill a more favorable pace here as the cliched storyline and padding found within here are the few features that bring it down.
Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language and Violence.
