I love ghost story movies, but this one is so poorly written and directed that I couldn't suspend my disbelief enough to enjoy it. It was obvious that it had some decent production behind it - the cinematography and sound were pretty good, I thought. Great atmosphere and mood around a story that isn't original but isn't a bad premise to build a good ghost story on. This one is very talky and drawn out, unfortunately.
Some people aren't going to have the same problems I did with this and might actually like this movie quite a bit, so let me try to break it down briefly to give you an idea what's in store without any major spoilers.
A young couple and their deaf son move to a house they've inherited. The young boy starts seeing ghost children in tattered clothes who lead him to an orphanage nearby where the guy who ran it still lives with his, uh, "assistant" or caretaker I guess, Frank. It's not difficult to guess where it goes from there, but we figure it all out WAY before any of the characters do, which makes the rest of the movie kind of a slog to sit through.
All the kids and the old guy do a pretty decent acting job in this, but everyone else is pretty bad. Frank is so laughably over the top that it's almost funny. The mother is on the verge of hysteria throughout most of the movie and seemed to be written as more of an obstacle to the progress of the story than anything else. I feel kind of bad for the actress because I think if the character was written to be more relatable, likeable, and less of an obstacle, her performance and the movie as a whole would have been better.
There are events in the movie that are horrific but bloodless and actually done quite well - a great example of letting the audience fill in the horrific details without needing to actually show them.
So it's not ALL bad, but the way the main characters are written, portrayed, and directed, I cringed through too much of this. It was so bad. I actually liked the ending, even though it was a little hokey, but sitting through the rest of the movie for it is not worth it, in my opinion. 3/10.
