The Offering

Right, well I watched this movie and it bore the title "The Faith of Anna Waters", but apparently it is really known as "The Offering"? Or so it would seem.

Well, regardless of the title, then this movie was rubbish. Pure and simple. It was uneventful, it was boring and it just lacked appeal and it was frightfully devoid of anything even remotely scary.

It was as it director and writer Kelvin Tong was following a dummy's guidebook of how-to-make-a-horror-movie. But he took it one step further, because everything that was supposed to be scary in the movie just turned out to be cheesy, campy and downright stupid.

I endured a horribly long hour of watching "The Offering", then I just had my share of stupidity on the screen. And I got up and turned it off, never to return to finish the rest of the movie. Why? Well, because the movie was so mundane, so generic, so pointless that it would be a waste of time and effort to return to watch the rest of it. It was a wonder in itself that I managed to sit through a whole hour of this ordeal. But I was hoping that director Kelvin Tong would swing a magical wand and make it all miraculously more interesting.

That just never happened.

The storyline told in "The Offering" was simplistic and easy to follow. Actually, it was so simplistic that it was sort of an insult to the audience, because we were served everything hand and foot, and it was presented in a manner so you didn't have to use your brain in any way. You just sat there, being spoon-fed the contents of the movie. A vile stew of generic storytelling made unwatchable.

The acting in the movie was fairly adequate, although the actors and actresses were indeed fighting a losing uphill battle against an atrocious storyline, a dreadfully boring script, and it didn't help that they were given shallow and pointless characters to portray on the screen and attempt to make interesting for the audience.

If you enjoy horror movies, you need to take heed and do yourself a favor and stay well clear of "The Offering".

I found myself imitating mystery science theater to keep myself full pulling out my hair and gouging out my eyes. The acting is purely Awful! The little girl thinks EVERY disturbance is her mom coming back, the word Mommy is used in this film more than anything else. The plot is terrible, had zero to do with Babel and the tower. Did I mention the offering is nothing? This is nothing more than a B exorcist movie with no plot and terrible acting, even the Asian Priest has miracle ability to hack cyber attacks..... Really? The Tower of Babel is pointless, there is NO offering, I literally would have been pleased had EVERYONE died in this movie. Save yourself the shame and don't watch this terrible film, it isn't even humorous in its terrible nature. If I had control I would delete this video from all things.

Before beginning my review I'd like to state that I went to the extent of creating an account just to comment on how terrible this "movie" is.

Midway through watching, I decided to research the director and script writer (same person not surprisingly) in search of some sort of justification for the poor script writing and directing displayed in the film. The following stumbled me: 1) This is evidently not a low budget film which leads one to question "why is this film so horrible?" And "Who funded this crap and why???!" 2) The actors seem relatively talented, why did they agree to act in this film? 3) What is going on??

As a film student, I find myself genuinely disturbed by the inconsistency and lack of creativity depicted and honestly I could have put together a far better script. If anything this film is humorous... I must give them that, it's gripping. I found myself fixated, awaiting the next corny jump scare. This could genuinely be mistaken for comedy, I mean the demon sounds like Yoda..

F*ck this, I've lost hope in filmmaking.

The Offering is one of the worst horror movies I have seen in 2016. This one isn't as low budget as many of the crappy ones I have seen this year, but it sure takes the prize on being half-finished and sloppy. It is, in all fairness, also sort of an amateurish Indonesian production.

Even though it doesn't exactly look cheap, the entire project is, from a technical standpoint, utterly terrible. The cinematography and camera work is quite decent for the most part, but the acting, direction, plot and "scary" parts are dreadful. The horror part seems like a badly filmed spoof (the lighting is bad and the shots are often badly executed). The reactions of the characters are also incredibly unbelievable (no details given, since it is spoiler material). And the plot, oh my god. It was so amateurish... Like a bunch of children sat down and listed a plot that they thought was clever, while it was really just incredibly lame.I will not spoil the disappointment for you. Let me just say that I hated everything about it.

I give it two out of ten. I feel this is the right grade.

I enjoyed The Maid (2020) and thought Kelvin Tong directed it. Boy was I wrong. He apparently directed The Maid (2005). Because I'm a Western person, I made the stupid mistake of thinking this film - The Offering - set in Singapore was related to the 2020 Thai film when it was directed by the same person as the 2005 Chinese film. Oops.

ANYWAY, I suffered for my ignorance. The Faith of Anna Waters i.e. The Offering (2016) is an absolutely trite and mediocre Americanized Hollywood film set in Singapore. 90 percent of the characters are white people and everyone speaks American English. The writing is bad, the dialogue is wooden, and the actors portraying the child and the ex-husband characters can't even act.

The only thing that compelled me to continue watching is that I genuinely wanted to know what the heck was going on with the mystery behind the film's events. There are a few genuinely scary, disturbing or gross parts but overall the best thing about the film is the house where most of it takes place. Yeah.